4 ms·

If the information is verifiable, why can't wikipedia just let the page exist?

by hudell 12y ago

rory096 12y ago
How does one know it's correct? If I do a research study and discover some new fact I think is "correct," should I be able to just put that on Wikipedia, without peer review?
- dfxm12 12y ago
  One can verify the references: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_McMillen#References https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_McMillen#References Pages without references get pruned pretty quickly. In your scenario, you'd have to get published first, then put this fact in the appropriate page, then reference the published research. Of course, some things fall through the cracks & editors of some pages are more vigilant than others.
DanBC 12y ago
Wikipedia is not about "correct" or "true", it's about "verifiable". This leads to some distortions and a lot of frustration. It might be why WP has a problem keeping technical editors around.
- hudell 12y ago
  Fair enough, I edited the comment.
- drostie 12y ago
  Well, it's also that it's not consistently applied across the board. In the actual definition of notability, it is made clear that the policy is purely about verifiability: something is notable when we can say more than a couple verifiable things about it. However, because the policy is named notability, the AFD (articles for deletion) threads very often contain systematic mention of how noteworthy an effect is "within the [whatever] community". I never really followed up on it, but I wanted to see whether I could game the system in the reverse way. Coming from a physics background, in college I wrote up some drafts about a fake physics concept, including some thought into using @cornell.edu emails to create a fake arxiv.org LaTeX article or two. The idea was to combine this with links to 404'ed pages, some fake blog articles across the Internet authored by me, and some The actual concept was going to be something like "Tenacity (science)" which was going to explain that NASA researchers had discovered some unexplained and hard-to-causally-model (but extremely predictable) force which makes orbital rocketry more energy-expensive than "the calculations" would give you. Models would be proposed requiring, say, Kerr metric general relativity solutions to Earth's gravity (hence trying to determine whether the core of the Earth was actually a spinning black hole) or strange drag forces going like v^1.5 or v^3 or something. The joke was that the actual genesis of the phrase was a 2005 Homestar Runner cartoon where a character named Strong Bad is sitting in a foil-lines cardboard box pretending that he is involved in a space program. "Got to... escape... Earth's... tenacity..." he says as if straining under a heavy weight.
  - Dylan16807 12y ago
    >In the actual definition of notability, it is made clear that the policy is purely about verifiability: something is notable when we can say more than a couple verifiable things about it. Someone is doing things very wrong then, because I've seen a lot of over-specialized but completely verifiable information get removed from Wikipedia. The reasoning was entirely based on noteworthiness.
- pfortuny 12y ago
  Well, actually, it is about "quotable" more than "verifiable". The latter term implies that truth is part of the issue, whereas they only care about "quotations" as proof. Possible "relevant"/"trustworthy" quotations but not much more than that.
benologist 12y ago
If we must question whether content is written by shills or even relevant then Wikipedia is a lot less valuable. If the defined standards are important they must be enforced or the platform will evolve, for better or worse. You can see this on HN. Three of the top five links on HN right now are companies using their blogs to advertise on HN. As marketing on HN becomes important for startups the submission process stops being part of our defense for quality. Eventually we are democratically choosing our front page from submissions that bypassed our democracy, like an election in Hong Kong of presidential candidates selected by China, or a parody of democracy.

If the information is verifiable, why can't wikipedia just let the page exist?

by hudell 12y ago

If the information is verifiable, why can't wikipedia just let the page exist?

How does one know it's correct? If I do a research study and discover some new fact I think is "correct," should I be able to just put that on Wikipedia, without peer review?

dfxm12 12y ago
One can verify the references: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_McMillen#References https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_McMillen#References Pages without references get pruned pretty quickly. In your scenario, you'd have to get published first, then put this fact in the appropriate page, then reference the published research. Of course, some things fall through the cracks & editors of some pages are more vigilant than others.

DanBC 12y ago

Wikipedia is not about "correct" or "true", it's about "verifiable". This leads to some distortions and a lot of frustration. It might be why WP has a problem keeping technical editors around.

hudell 12y ago
Fair enough, I edited the comment.
drostie 12y ago
Well, it's also that it's not consistently applied across the board. In the actual definition of notability, it is made clear that the policy is purely about verifiability: something is notable when we can say more than a couple verifiable things about it. However, because the policy is named notability, the AFD (articles for deletion) threads very often contain systematic mention of how noteworthy an effect is "within the [whatever] community". I never really followed up on it, but I wanted to see whether I could game the system in the reverse way. Coming from a physics background, in college I wrote up some drafts about a fake physics concept, including some thought into using @cornell.edu emails to create a fake arxiv.org LaTeX article or two. The idea was to combine this with links to 404'ed pages, some fake blog articles across the Internet authored by me, and some The actual concept was going to be something like "Tenacity (science)" which was going to explain that NASA researchers had discovered some unexplained and hard-to-causally-model (but extremely predictable) force which makes orbital rocketry more energy-expensive than "the calculations" would give you. Models would be proposed requiring, say, Kerr metric general relativity solutions to Earth's gravity (hence trying to determine whether the core of the Earth was actually a spinning black hole) or strange drag forces going like v^1.5 or v^3 or something. The joke was that the actual genesis of the phrase was a 2005 Homestar Runner cartoon where a character named Strong Bad is sitting in a foil-lines cardboard box pretending that he is involved in a space program. "Got to... escape... Earth's... tenacity..." he says as if straining under a heavy weight.
- Dylan16807 12y ago
  >In the actual definition of notability, it is made clear that the policy is purely about verifiability: something is notable when we can say more than a couple verifiable things about it. Someone is doing things very wrong then, because I've seen a lot of over-specialized but completely verifiable information get removed from Wikipedia. The reasoning was entirely based on noteworthiness.
pfortuny 12y ago
Well, actually, it is about "quotable" more than "verifiable". The latter term implies that truth is part of the issue, whereas they only care about "quotations" as proof. Possible "relevant"/"trustworthy" quotations but not much more than that.

benologist 12y ago

If we must question whether content is written by shills or even relevant then Wikipedia is a lot less valuable. If the defined standards are important they must be enforced or the platform will evolve, for better or worse. You can see this on HN. Three of the top five links on HN right now are companies using their blogs to advertise on HN. As marketing on HN becomes important for startups the submission process stops being part of our defense for quality. Eventually we are democratically choosing our front page from submissions that bypassed our democracy, like an election in Hong Kong of presidential candidates selected by China, or a parody of democracy.