Talk:Decoding Chomsky

Would like to delete some weak and unverified material

In the "Further research on Chomsky at MIT" section:

In his book review, Robert Barsky poses the crucial question not answered in Knight's book: "Machine Translation research is turned into a project dedicated to 'command and control systems'. Really? And how did Chomsky contribute to that MT project?"

Since finishing Decoding Chomsky, Knight has found apparently compelling evidence shedding light on this question. It appears that between 1963 and 1965, Chomsky worked as a "consultant" on an Air Force project to establish English as an "operational language for command and control". This is confirmed by several of Chomsky's students at the time, who also worked on this military project.

These paragraphs constitute personal opinions, and also show a lack of understanding of what "command and control systems" are (while the military jargon is characteristically hyperbolic, the meaning of the term is actually innocuous - your computer desktop is a "command and control system").

Moreover, it's not the mandate of Wikipedia editors to decide what is a "crucial question", judge what constitutes "compelling evidence", postulate what "appears" to be, engage in original research, or frame commonplace facts in such a way as to create the impression of conspiracies (e.g., consultant-in-quotes).

The reason I'm making a fuss about this is that (as a result of misapprehension, I believe) the paragraphs contribute little to the verified content of the article, and create the impression (probably not intended) of Wikipedia as a forum for personal bias.

Anyway, after having made one hamfisted attempt to balance out the vibe by adding contextual material (which was reverted, rightly I think), I figured I'd run this up the flagpole before trying a different tack for improving the article. Anybody object to my suggestions?

(donning asbestos underwear)

Sivamoira (talk) 07:44, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

I went ahead and deleted the two paragraphs. It does seem to strengthen the article by removing the innuendo.

Sivamoira (talk) 05:04, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

NPOV

User:Altg20April2nd, if you are going to have all this content about what Knight claims he can prove, you should couch it in appropriate terms--not in Wikipedia's voice. And you certainly can't do that in that way if all you cite is Knight's own publications. Furthermore, I chopped that list of blurbs ("positive reviews"), because that's all they were--blurbs, one-liners culled from unreliable sources. Please follow common sense and academic protocol by citing fully and fairly, from the original source--not a compendium on Amazon or on Knight's own website. Thank you. Drmies (talk) 16:02, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

Altg20April2nd, would you please stop restoring the content that Drmies recently removed? The original reason given by Drmies for removing that content was, "these are essentially blurbs, and the sourcing for them is not acceptable". Initially I considered reverting Drmies's edit myself; then I looked at the issue more carefully, and I decided that Drmies was correct to remove that content. Some of the material was sourced to the website of Amazon.co.uk. Amazon.co.uk is a not a peer-reviewed publication. It is a commercial website that includes user-generated content, in the form of customer reviews. People do not have to have any qualifications to write such reviews, and they can say nearly anything they want to in them. It should be self-evident that Amazon.co.uk does not qualify as a reliable source per WP:RS. In any case, Drmies is correct that the content sourced to Amazon.co.uk is essentially advertising material, blurbs used to sell the book. They do not constitute serious reviews and have no place in the article. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 19:12, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Some of the other sources used include blogs such as this. Such blogs are also generally not considered reliable sources. If you do believe that they should be considered acceptable, it is up to you to make your case on the talk page. You should consider that if anything of importance is said in those blogs, then it should also be said somewhere in a respectable peer reviewed publication. Per WP:RS, please use such publications instead of blog postings. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 19:21, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Freeknowledgecreator, it's worse: I have learned that frequently those blurbs (on book covers and on websites like Amazon), which I thought were always culled from real reviews, are just one-liners written for the purpose of advertising. Drmies (talk) 22:00, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Whoa, I didn't even see that link dump at the bottom of the page. Drmies (talk) 22:06, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

User:Altg20April2nd, yes, don't restore that comment. That removing all the blurbs makes for an unbalanced article is true, but you just cannot stick all that promotional material in there and think you've created balance. Stronger article writing wouldn't divvy up reviews in positive and negative anyway: material should be properly synthesized. And you can start by pulling the chunk starting "In contrast, a reviewer..." from the lead (inappropriate there, in the context and after the previous sentence), to build a decent "Reception" section. Drmies (talk) 22:05, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Hello, Drmies. As you can see from the article's recent edit history, there is ongoing disruption here. An IP editor is editing the article in a way that violates WP:POINT. It should be noted that this may also be a case of an editor with an account logging out to edit as an IP. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 02:37, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Freeknowledgecreator, as likely as that seems, it is not borne out by the facts, I'm afraid. But yes, that disruption is real. I warned the editor. I suggest you do the same every time you see such a revert, which will make it easier for an admin to conclude that disruption needs to be stopped. BTW, "Typical Chomsky cult censorship"--that's pretty sad, isn't it. Drmies (talk) 13:46, 26 December 2019 (UTC)