Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2012-02-13/In the news

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Timothy Messer-Kruse came up against our system of content management, and our system of content management quite rightly won. Messer-Kruse may like to look at WP:HISTRS that covers Wikipedia's epistemological conceptions in relation to History articles. In particularly, Messer-Kruse can be confident that our emphasis on Review Articles and WEIGHTing sourced from the introductions to field survey books by historians is the basis of our WEIGHTing policy in History articles. If Messer-Kruse wants to change the article on the Haymarket martyrs, the first thing to change is the consensus amongst the scholarly community itself. Fifelfoo (talk) 03:11, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I bumped into "Ownership Issues" at Haymarket affair also. I did get substantial corrections and improvements made, but not without issues. And I should probably go back and make sure the fixes stayed up, now that I'm thinking about it. You know who you are. Knock it off. Carrite (talk) 07:01, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ugh, I see from the Chronicle of Higher Education article that somebody used The Supreme Wikipedia Idiocy™ on the professor -- the distilled 200-proof mind-numbing stupidity that "Wikipedia is concerned with Verifiability, not Truth." HORSESHIT!!! Wikipedia is concerned with verifiability and veracity. That other moron slogan needs to go in the dumpster. However, given our systemic ultra-conservatism with respect to policy changes that will happen when pigs fly. Still, any intelligent person using that Orwellian idiocy should be ashamed of themselves... Carrite (talk) 07:11, 15 February 2012 (UTC) Last edit: Carrite (talk) 07:18, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Given that this is a 10 year old project, with rapidly changing policies, I'd suggest that we're not that conservative for a militantly free as in beer free as in speech volunteer project that supplies more highly ranked google results than any other economic information project. Fifelfoo (talk) 07:21, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Checking the talk page, it appears that the professor tried to use a blog as a source. The two editors who appear to be heavily involved with that article, User:Malik Shabazz and User:Gwen Gale rightfully explained to him why that wouldn't work, but may have gone too far with the "undue weight" argument, as the article appears to be long enough to be able to present more information. Cla68 (talk) 07:50, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sweetheart when you appear on the same page as the National Autism Society, Natural News, and Mercola you realise that Google is no arbiter of quality, but is mostly concerned with churn. John lilburne (talk) 12:35, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

To quote Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, "If it's truth you're looking for, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall." ŞůṜīΣĻ¹98¹^Speak 14:02, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

According to MesserKruse's User contributions page, he only made a dozen edits in 2009 and another dozen edits in 2011. He gives up too easily. He didn't understand some of the basic Wikipedia rules, like giving reasons for the changes in the edit box, and not using blogs as WP:RS. If you're writing a term paper, you have to follow MLA style. If you're writing for WP, you have to follow WP style. I concede WP style can be clunky and confusing, but so is any big style book. MesserKruse made the classic mistake of saying, "I'm an expert, I found this in my research, I'm right, Avrich is wrong, do it my way." People didn't accept his changes because he didn't follow the rules. We're happy to work with academics, but give us a chance. Learn the culture and follow the rules, just like you make your undergraduates do. Haymarket affair now incorporates his research (although not as unequivocally as he might like). I think Haymarket affair proves the opposite of MesserKruse's complaint in the Chronicle -- WP can incorporate the views of experts. I hope he's happy. Best of luck with the new book. --Nbauman (talk) 19:40, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think your comment about "not using blogs" highlights what many people can find confusing or off-putting about Wikipedia. In the original discussion on the Haymarket Talk Page and in your comment blogs have been written about as if they are completely ruled out for sourcing information (e.g. you wrote "not using blogs" rather than "not normally using blogs"). But WP:RS actually says blogs are, "largely not acceptable". The word "largely" is there for for a reason, I presume - but the discussion was 'citing a blog is wrong' rather than 'citing a blog normally isn't ok; what's the reason for thinking it might be in this case?'. Certainly it's fair to expect people to be willing to understand and follow Wikipedia's rule, but in turn I think it's also important that anyone citing rules at someone else saying "you've got it wrong" take care to be precise and correct in what they're saying. That too is often a problem, at least in my experience. Markpackuk (talk) 16:12, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Well, let's look at this big "original research" statement, shall we?

FIRST CHANGE:

Original text: "The bomb blast and ensuing gunfire resulted in the deaths of eight police officers, mostly from friendly fire, and an unknown number of civilians."

So-called original research text: "The bomb blast and ensuing gunfire resulted in the deaths of eight police officers and an unknown number of civilians."

The first statement implies that 5 or more of the 8 police deaths were from friendly fire. There are NO published sources which assert that. The second statement, which MesserKruse attempted to install, is factually accurate and backed by sources. Only it's not the version preferred by the "Page Owner," it would seem... The first statement violates NPOV ("not only were the Haymarket martyrs innocent, the bomber didn't kill the cops anyway").

SECOND CHANGE:

Merely switches content in a footnote gloss — the only reason a gloss is there at all is that the "Page Owner" prefers this method of footnoting and reverted my conversion to the Simple Standard System. No article content is changed at all.

In short, MesserKruse did nothing wrong other than come into conflict with an editor in serial violation of WP:OWN. NEITHER footnote gloss should be there and the inserted text of MesserKruse is NPOV, replacing still-standing POV text. Carrite (talk) 17:19, 17 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Paywall?

I'm pretty sure there's no paywall hiding this article. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 03:14, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

History recorded by historian versus history recorded by machine

I'm having some trouble checking the truth of M. Messer-Kruse's account of past events against the actual edit history of the article and account contributions histories, as recorded by MediaWiki. See User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 147#History recorded by historian versus history recorded by machine for details. Uncle G (talk) 08:42, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]