atw: Re: One more time , for the doubters

  • From: "Anthony Self" <ASelf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2011 16:51:54 +1000

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: www.abelard.com.au

Skype: geoffrey.marnell

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