atw: Re: One more time , for the doubters

  • From: "Geoffrey Marnell" <geoffrey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2011 08:36:48 +1000

Thanks for the long explanation, but I think we are going round in circles.
You wrote:

 

"The article then gets reviewed by an expert panel of volunteers [before it
can get a FA status]"

 

But how are these experts chosen? Isn't this primarily what we have been
debating for weeks now?

 

And if only 0.1% of Wikipedia articles have been "reviewed by an expert
panel [and granted FA status]", doesn't that explain why, nay justify,
widespread  scepticism. You are, are you not, telling us that 99.9% of
articles are, in some ways, not up to scratch (in the sense of being either
untested by other contributors or tested but found wanting)?

 

Cheers

 

Geoffrey Marnell

Principal Consultant

Abelard Consulting Pty Ltd

T: +61 3 9596 3456

F: +61 3 9596 3625

M: 0419 574 668

W:  <http://www.abelard.com.au> www.abelard.com.au

Skype: geoffrey.marnell

From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Anthony Self
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2011 4:52 PM
To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: atw: Re: One more time , for the doubters

 

Hi Geoff

 

In a stub article, there's not much to trust, because the information is
sketchy. As the number of contributors grows, and the size of the article
grows, so does the quality.

 

So far in this discussion, we've looked at two articles in detail:
"Hemming's Cartulary", and "Proteomics", and two more superficially ("SELDI"
and "Rickety Kate/Hearts"). These have been pretty much randomly seleted.
When we looked, we found that some of the contributors seemed indeed to be
qualified to write about the subject matter. It is harder to verify whether
an anonymous contributor is similarly qualified, but there are ways to
assure ourselves, as readers, of their competency. We can see what they've
changed or added in the past, for example. We can check the references they
provide. When it comes down to it, we're not making an assessment on the
trustworthiness of the contributors, but the reliability of the information
they write. Just as it is with old-fashioned encyclopedias.

 

I must admit I still don't get your whole definition of knowledge,
containers of knowledge, source of knowledge, and now "matching knowledge"
and "declaring knowledge to be knowledge". I can make some judgement about
whether someone might end up more knowledgeable after reading a stub
article, though. Let's pull one out at random. Easiest way to do this is by
trying a "Random article" from the Wikipedia main page until you find a stub
topic. I did that and found a stub topic called Inquest (1931 Film).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquest_(1931_film) There are only two
contributors for this page, and nobody has touched it for over a year. It
has only been viewed twice in the last 30 day! What a beauty! There's hardly
any information there... it's really just the year of release, the name of
the actors, writer and director, and a single sentence describing the plot.

 

So, am I more knowledgeable after reading that stub topic? Yes, I never knew
there was a film called Inquest. I didn't know there was a playwright named
Michael Barringer, but now I do. The article isn't very well referenced
(there's only a couple), so to fact-check, I scouted around elsewhere on the
Web. I found Barringer listed in a playwright's database. I found, on the
Open Library project site, that H F W Deane published a 93 page play called
"Inquest! - A play in three acts" by Michael Barringer in 1935. I found the
Windmill Theatre had reproduced another Wikipedia article on their official
site indicating that Windmill Theatre opened in 1931 with Michael
Barringer's play "Inquest". This was confirmed by a music hall and theatre
history Web site, which also described some confusion about what the opening
date was.  

 

So, it pretty much all checks out. I don't know how long films took to make
in those days, but I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't in 1931... seems a
bit too quick from play's release to movie adaption. Maybe this was a
dreaded error that would negate Wikipedia's potential status as a container
for sources of knowledge! So I went back and checked the meagre two
references in the Wikipedia article, and found one to the British Film
Institute database. Sure enough, the film was made in 1931. 

 

I am confident that I am more knowledgeable after reading a random Wikipedia
stub article. (That knowledge is probably useless, unless it crops up in a
trivia night question.) A stub article is more likely to be incomplete than
it is to being incorrect. All along, I've maintained that reliability isn't
an absolute. Is Wikipedia reliable? Quite reliable; on a par with
Britannica. Is it crap? No. Are there errors? Surprisingly few. Does the
ability for contributors to choose to be anonymous have an effect on
quality? Can't tell. Is it perfect? Of course not. Is it a useful resource?
Hell yes. Should educators provide better guidelines for using Wikipedia?
Yes. 

 

Addressing your question of "who decides that an [article] deserves an FA
status?". Again, I'm not sure why you don't look these things up yourself,
as the process is very open and the information easy to find, but I am more
than happy to do the leg work for you. (You seem to prefer guessing, and
then using that guess as proof that, in this case, "like-minded folk agree
that what they declare to be knowledge is knowledge".)

 

Contributors involved with an article first list if for peer review. Peer
review results in feedback that will help the contributors improve the
quality. After incorporating the feedback, a contributor with subject matter
expertise and the sources can nominate the article for GA (good article) or
FA status. The article then gets reviewed by an expert panel of volunteers,
following strict FA status policies. Ballot and consensus processes are then
used to decide whether the article reaches FA quality standards or not.
There are other processes for removing FA status. I'm not sure if this
happens after a regular review, or whether someone nominates it for removal
if they believe the information has become dated.

 

FA status is not just handed out willy-nilly. The hurdles are high. About
0.1% of articles on Wikipedia are of FA status. Long and complicated
challenges and arguments are played out during the process. "Like-minded
folk" they are not.

 

There are many more GA status articles. That's the next rung down the
quality ladder. To achieve good article status, there is a similar process,
involving peer review, arguments, and ballots.  In short, GA articles have
to be well written, factually accurate and verifiable, broad in coverage,
neutral in point of view, stable, and illustrated, where possible. They
don't have to be as comprehensive as featured articles, but they can't omit
any major facet of the topic.

 

Interesting, isn't it? Wait until you find out about the philosophies of
Exopedianism, Mesopedianism and Metapedianism.

 

Tony Self

 

 

 

 

 

>>> "Geoffrey Marnell" 31/08/11 8:29 AM >>>

Tony, we can both cherry-pick until the cows come home. I never said every
article in Wikipedia was poor. And I would expect that a daily feature
article would have been deliberately chosen precisely because it is a good
one. But do remember that you gave us another example earlier where 54% of
contributors were anonymous. Surely the level of trust is different in these
two cases.

 

To come back, yet again, to my point about whether Wikipedia is a source of
knowledge, I take it that you accept that a claim with a ?sub-topic? status
is not necessarily a claim that matches knowledge. (This status applies to
articles as they first appear in Wikipedia, those without any editorial
scrutiny at all). If it did match knowledge, no changes would be necessary
to it. So somewhere along your publishing ?continuum?, a claim reaches FA
status. Presumably that is when it matches knowledge. So the continuum
ranges from POSSIBLY KNOWLEDGE (BUT MAY BE WRONG) through to KNOWLEDGE. If
so, aren?t you just agreeing with me that just because something is plonked
into Wikipedia doesn?t make it knowledge. It needs to be granted that status
along the way (with FA). 

 

And then who decides that a claim deserves an FA status? The group of
contributors? So a group of like-minded folk agree that what they declare to
be knowledge  is knowledge, give the claim an FA status and, bingo, it is
knowledge.

 

I think I?ll buy my latte somewhere else.

 

 

Geoffrey Marnell

Principal Consultant

Abelard Consulting Pty Ltd

T: +61 3 9596 3456

F: +61 3 9596 3625

M: 0419 574 668

W:  <http://www.abelard.com.au/> www.abelard.com.au

Skype: geoffrey.marnell

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