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August 30

08:35:40, 30 August 2014 review of submission by Skadge

Skadge (talk · contribs)

Hello, we (~5 researchers from 5 different research project) have been working on an article to compare (academic) robotic simulators.

I appreciate that Wikipedia policies regarding 'original research' require published sources. Most (if not all) of the projects referenced on the page have academic publications attached to them, but those publications give technical overviews that are not sufficient to provide accurate technical comparisons. Hence the reference to websites. Would it be sufficient to add references to the academic publications in the first table (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Comparison_of_Robotic_Simulators#General_informations) to prevent the WP:OR flag?

[Please also take into consideration that the current article discussing simulation in robotics Robotics_simulator is just a list of links to websites, with no order (except the one the respective authors of the softwares decide to set, ie, theirs first), no comparison, and many outdated/obsolete references. I believe our proposal for a more systematic comparison represent a notable improvement.]

Thanks for your help Skadge (talk) 08:35, 30 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

References to academic papers (for example) can pose problems. Broadly, unless the paper has been peer reviewed, or published in a WP:RS, it is a primary source. Primary sources may be used in a restricted set of circumstances, and a consensus may need to be reached on their deployment in this case (if you choose to deploy them). THe objective, yours and ours, is to achieve an authoritative record of the material that is published elsewhere, not to create new research, nor to synthesise new research from existing material.

Others here will know the various Wikiprojects to contact for advice. My suggestion is to open a set of discussions on the talk page of the draft to show your thinking, and to reach relevant consensus on any areas of doubt, inviting the WIkiproject(s) to help and comment.

The draft as a whole has excellent potential. I am sure you don't need to be told that. The world of academe is very different from Wikipedia. Reading WP:ACADEME will; indicate how different.

Our role as reviewers is to seek to ensure that an article will not immediately be subject to one of our deletion processes when it is accepted. That is why we push it back to the author. We want to accept articles. I would love to have accepted this one at once when I reviewed it, but I viewed it as needing reference polish. Fiddle Faddle 08:43, 30 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your quick feedback. Still, I do not understand why a page that compare readily available softwares (1000th of similar software comparison pages exist -- and are useful -- in a variety of domains on wikipedia) suddenly lead to WP:OR issues. I mean, the page only compare features of these softwares. It does not try to synthesise research/review approaches, etc. Skadge (talk) 08:50, 30 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Skadge: The other pages you mention may or may not be poor pages. The issue we have is that no page here may set a precedent for any other page. If we allowed that then the standards would decline rapidly and we would head faster and faster towards Idiocracy. Wikipedia has a great many pages that are below the standards we strive for. It is valid to flag any that you find for improvement, perhaps even deletion. Any editor may do this and should do this. A comparison page that is not referenced may, in extreme circumstances, be seen to utter a libel. This is something we wish to avoid.

I am aware of your good motives in creating a decent, clean, and correct comparison page. I'm equally sure you wish it to be of the highest quality. Excellence in referencing achieves this best. Fiddle Faddle 08:59, 30 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Timtrent: I understand your answer. I'm fine with discussing on the Talk page of the Draft how to reach the wikipedia standards, but I have to admit that I do not yet understand what you are looking for/expecting. How would you build a reliable (and simply *factual*) comparison of publicly available softwares if neither references to the projects' websites or academic publications are not suitable? Skadge (talk) 10:00, 30 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Skadge: If you re-read both what I have said, which is an interpretation, and then study policies and guidelines, which are chapter and verse, I hope you will see that there are carefully regulated circumstances in which both types of less reliable verification may be used. The thing you are creating as an article is one of the hardest to source. This is why I am asking for excellent standards and great care. What we all look for is diligence in finding and deploying sources which are independent of the item, are significant coverage of it, and are in WP:RS. Once those are in place less reliable sources can be used to backfill verification that one can only get from, for example, a primary source. Fiddle Faddle 12:13, 30 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Because this conversation has direct relevance to the draft and the subsequent approved article, I am copying eveything above here, including the title, to Draft talk:Comparison of Robotic Simulators. My strong suggestion is that further discussion should take place there. Fiddle Faddle 15:23, 30 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]