User:Lawrence J. Howell

I edited Wikipedia for a brief period in 2013. The reason I have stopped may be of interest to others considering editing, so for the record here it is.

I've encountered no problems at Wikipedia. Rather, what led me to suspend editing here was an experience of mine over at Wiktionary. These two wikis are of course independent entities, but many Wiktionary editors contribute to Wikipedia articles on linguistics, and despite differences in editorial polity there is some overlap between the two.

Wiktionary has a forum for discussing policy matters, the Beer Parlour. I started up one BP thread and was involved in a second. Those interested in reading them can go to Wiktionary, click the Beer Parlour link and type my name into the search box. For those not quite so interested, here is a quick summary.

For some time, certain of Wiktionary's entries on Chinese characters contained interpretative data taken from my online dictionary. Earlier this year, I created a BP thread to ask whether editors would regard it as a conflict of interest for me to rework and expand on this material. No objections were raised, so I proceeded to do so.

Soon after one editor who had not contributed to this thread started a fresh one to call attention to my activity and request input from other editors as to the propriety of the material. Several editors objected by claiming lack of academic support for the theory that the ancient Han language was phonesthemic. I noted the inaccuracy of this claim, the scholar Axel Schuessler being a recognized authority who holds this position. Whereupon those who objected on this point disappeared and took no further part in the thread.

With one exception, that is: An editor who reversed position and acknowledged Schuessler as a reliable source, but maintained that Schuessler's general principles do not uphold my interpretations for specific characters. S/he and I debated back and forth over a period of weeks. In the end, four editors (or five if you include me) supported inclusion of phonesthemic data, whether on the Chinese character entry pages or elsewhere in Wiktionary. Opposed were the interlocutor mentioned and another editor whose concern centered on the question of single sourcing.

So what ultimately happened? An editor who had taken part in neither of the two threads decided that "... in my judgment, based on the concerns raised in the Beer Parlour discussion, there are sufficient grounds for removal of this material." And remove the material he did, in cooperation with another editor. Thus it was that weeks of debate culminating in a majority of editors pronouncing in favor of inclusion of material ended with its removal from Wiktionary.

That's a risk one runs when editing wikis: The possibility of seeing time and effort spent preparing and uploading data or editing existing entries go all for naught. The reason for the reversion may be fully in line with the wiki's editorial policies and practices, or it may be completely arbitrary. Usually it will fall somewhere in the middle, as it did in my case. When material is reverted, the contributor can revert the reversion or attempt to gain support from other editors active on the pages in question. Reverting reversions tends to generate nothing but pointless edit wars, and I had already gone to great lengths in a fruitless attempt to identify consensus, so I let the matter go.

The experience was educational and bi-directional, I do believe. I learned much about editorial dynamics and practices at Wiktionary, while Wiktionary editors and casual readers of the BP forum have become exposed to phonesthemic tendencies in Old Chinese, a solid step forward in properly evaluating the ancient Han language. In that sense, the time spent on the threads was well worth it.

The outcome of the Wiktionary debate did not impact my Wikipedia activity, but dampened my enthusiasm for contributing to collaborative projects in general. I may resume editing Wikipedia someday, but wikis are quite low on my priority list right now.

Regarding my experience with Wikipedia, I'm content with what I've contributed, no matter how evanescent the edits prove. As for Wikipedia in general, the sociologist in me is fascinated by the mutable content and the editorial give-and-take behind its creation and redaction. The fascination goes double with respect to certain articles treating of historical events, those in which common knowledge and in some cases even the laws of physics get trumped by, shall we say, other considerations.

Lawrence J. Howell (talk) 04:41, 28 October 2013 (UTC)