[Taxacom] Wikipedia vs. science

[Tony.Rees at csiro.au]

Hi Stephen,

Pardon me if I am missing the point here, but why not put the "original research"/relevant comments up on wikispecies, then cite that on Wikipedia as a citable source?

Regards - Tony

> 
> From: Paul van Rijckevorsel <dipteryx at freeler.nl>
> To: "TAXACOM@ MAILMAN. NHM. KU. EDU" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
> Sent: Monday, 14 May 2012 7:14 PM
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Wikipedia vs. science
> 
> 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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