7 ms·

> While your Mt. Gox theory sounds plausible, unless a reliable source challenges the claim or provides an alternate history, I think all we can do is treat th

by judk 13y ago

> While your Mt. Gox theory sounds plausible, unless a reliable source challenges the claim or provides an alternate history, I think all we can do is treat the now-established history ad an uncontroversial fact. Nice, Wikipedians actually believe that citogenesis creates real information. This is difference between "citation" and "scholarship". When a wikipedia article cites a non-primary source, if that source doesn't care its own sources, it is not a valid source for its claim, it is just hearsay.

poizan42 13y ago
I think (s)he was being sarcastic...
_delirium 13y ago
There's a bit of a sliding scale depending on the available sources. For a lot of contemporary stuff, newspaper articles are cited as sources, because there's not much better available. And newspaper articles don't always cite their sources well, which makes it a bit hard to know where they got their information. When better sources are available, they're preferred. For example, an article on WW2 should not cite random newspapers, but should substantiate any significant claims with a citation to a respectable history book or journal article, because there are enough of them available that there's no excuse for citing less-reliable sources. If a claim about WW2 can only be found in Wired, it probably shouldn't be in Wikipedia. There are some people who'd prefer applying that more broadly: if a claim can only be found in Wired (or any other newspaper/magazine) Wikipedia should not include it. This, however, would cause a whole different kind of controversy: when material is removed or articles are deleted due to lack of good-enough sources, some people get very angry and start attacking "deletionism". So there's a bit of an in-flux balance between only covering a relatively narrow range of impeccably-sourced topics, versus covering anything at all cited to any source at all.
gwern 13y ago
We don't actually know the 2 Wired writers were relying on Wikipedia or the version floating around the Internet. They might've gotten it straight from Karpels or McCaleb or a Mtgox staffer or someone, and just not given the source for it in their article. If going to McCaleb didn't work, my next step would be contacting them to learn their source: if they said they got it from Wikipedia or didn't know, then it'd discredit the article as a source for that particular assertion and the claim could at least be deleted & doubt cast on any other RSes asserting the claim without clear rationale.
- bjourne 13y ago
  I am not a Wikipedia rules lawyer, but my understanding is that Wikipedia forbids original research. So even if you contact McCaleb and get the true answer from him, Wired's statement still stands because your research isn't admissible. The question has come up before in historical articles where someones secondary source is directly contradicted by some editor with direct access to the archive files.
  - gwern 13y ago
    For statements by involved people, AFAIK we already have procedures for handling correspondence; I can forward the emails to OTRS and we cite the ticket as our ref. Same way as we handle copyright grants.

by judk 13y ago

poizan42 13y ago

I think (s)he was being sarcastic...

_delirium 13y ago

There's a bit of a sliding scale depending on the available sources. For a lot of contemporary stuff, newspaper articles are cited as sources, because there's not much better available. And newspaper articles don't always cite their sources well, which makes it a bit hard to know where they got their information. When better sources are available, they're preferred. For example, an article on WW2 should not cite random newspapers, but should substantiate any significant claims with a citation to a respectable history book or journal article, because there are enough of them available that there's no excuse for citing less-reliable sources. If a claim about WW2 can only be found in Wired, it probably shouldn't be in Wikipedia. There are some people who'd prefer applying that more broadly: if a claim can only be found in Wired (or any other newspaper/magazine) Wikipedia should not include it. This, however, would cause a whole different kind of controversy: when material is removed or articles are deleted due to lack of good-enough sources, some people get very angry and start attacking "deletionism". So there's a bit of an in-flux balance between only covering a relatively narrow range of impeccably-sourced topics, versus covering anything at all cited to any source at all.

gwern 13y ago

We don't actually know the 2 Wired writers were relying on Wikipedia or the version floating around the Internet. They might've gotten it straight from Karpels or McCaleb or a Mtgox staffer or someone, and just not given the source for it in their article. If going to McCaleb didn't work, my next step would be contacting them to learn their source: if they said they got it from Wikipedia or didn't know, then it'd discredit the article as a source for that particular assertion and the claim could at least be deleted & doubt cast on any other RSes asserting the claim without clear rationale.

bjourne 13y ago
I am not a Wikipedia rules lawyer, but my understanding is that Wikipedia forbids original research. So even if you contact McCaleb and get the true answer from him, Wired's statement still stands because your research isn't admissible. The question has come up before in historical articles where someones secondary source is directly contradicted by some editor with direct access to the archive files.
- gwern 13y ago
  For statements by involved people, AFAIK we already have procedures for handling correspondence; I can forward the emails to OTRS and we cite the ticket as our ref. Same way as we handle copyright grants.