[Taxacom] Wikipedia vs. science

[Carmine COLACINO]

Italian wikipedia is even worst, it is held in hostage by a clique of 
administrators who do what they want censuring at will, if anybody 
tries to protest (using their own "wikipedia" rules) he is banned right away?
and this applies to all fields, not only science.
Notwithstanding that Wikipedia is still a useful source of information,
but, of course, you must already know the subject to be sure it is accurate,
in the long run, though, continuing this trend, its usefulness might not be the case any more.

Dr.  Carmine Colacino
Laboratorio di Briologia
Dipartimento di Biologia Difesa e Biotecnologie Agro Forestali
Universit? degli Studi della Basilicata
Via dell?Ateneo Lucano, 10
85100 Potenza
Tel. [+39] 0971/206234  ?  fax [+39] 0971/204310 ? Cell. [+39] 329-3178399
http://www.unibas.it/utenti/colacino/
E-mail: carmine.colacino at unibas.it / colacino at bryology.eu

La religione affronta le grandi domande e d? risposte banali (P. Odifreddi)





On 14 May. 2012, at 09:14 , Paul van Rijckevorsel wrote:

> Yes, I suppose it had to happen sooner or later...
> 
> Wikipedia is a very strange phenomenon; it is a privately
> owned website, and users don't have any rights, except
> the copyright of whatever they contribute. However, the
> private owner of the website does not make any decisions
> on content (at least not unless things go very, very badly
> wrong), and decisions are made by 'the community', which
> is an undefined entity, and which is not accountable, except
> to itself. See
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use_(2012)/en.
> 
> It is very notable that the No Original Research policy is
> (still) so badly misunderstood (the average Wikipedia user
> is a sloppy reader). No Original Research has nothing to do
> with research, but with new thoughts / new syntheses / fiction.
> ( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:NOR )
> Thus, deleting material can, by definition, never be a NOR-
> violation (in fact, deleting material is often prescribed by the
> Verifiability policy). A user may do any amount of research,
> as long as what he/she actually adds to Wikipedia reflects
> existing (and published) thoughts. Nevertheless any number
> of Wikipedia users fail to accept this and misuse the term,
> accusing others of NOR-violations (as here), often while
> insisting on adding original thought themselves.
> 
> Paul
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Stephen Thorpe" <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
> To: "TAXACOM@ MAILMAN. NHM. KU. EDU" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
> Sent: Sunday, May 13, 2012 11:48 PM
> Subject: [Taxacom] Wikipedia vs. science
> 
> 
> Well, it had to happen sooner or later. Talking *Wikipedia* here, not
> *Wikispecies*. I have been blocked indefinitely from WP by an admin who
> wrote on my talk page [quote]This is a private website, and there are no
> "freedoms" nor "rights"[unquote] ... wow! A candid comment from another WP
> admin that I know: [quote]The community has become quite toxic and a lot of
> editors display self entitlement, which chased off a lot of new
> editors[unquote]
> 
> All because of some sloppy (but under normal circumstances very minor)
> editing of a page on WoRMS, which an idiotic WP editor insists on
> neverthless using as a source for a WP article on the relevant taxon, even
> though he admits that it was adding nothing but misinformation to what he
> already had from other sources! The WoRMS page listed a couple of species
> epithets as genera, and cited a nonexistent publication as the source for
> these names (or, more precisely, the publication does exist, but in a
> completely different journal to the cited journal!) At first I tried to tag
> the errors on the WP article as unreliable (or even just possibly
> unreliable) information, but was told that to do this was "Original
> Research", and therefore not allowed. This, I could just about accept,
> barely, but surely then the sensible thing to do is just to drop WoRMS as a
> source for this particular WP article? If you don't mention it, then it
> isn't a problem! But, no, for some
> unknown reason, that WP editor seems to "own" that article, demands to
> persist with WoRMS as the source, and admins are protecting him ...
> 
> The WP editor has written that the *only* thing that he will accept as
> sufficient reason to rebuke the WoRMS page is an explicit published
> statement in a peer reviewed journal to the effect that the relevant names
> on the current WoRMS page are a mistake! Sounds a bit "hopeful", doesn't
> it???
> 
> On another article by the same WP editor, on a species of Diptera found only
> in Australia, he has dragged out an archived version of a N.Z. Diptera web
> checklist which has now been taken down because it was not considered to be
> reliable enough. It lists the fly from N.Z., based, it turns out, on a
> misidentification. The WP editor nonetheless insists on using this archived
> checklist as a source for the presence of the fly in N.Z. ... wtf???
> 
> Stephen
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