[Taxacom] Wikipedia vs. science

Mon May 14 02:37:30 CDT 2012

Oh Tony, if only it were that simple! Wikipedia community have long ago distanced themselves from Wikispecies, and it is expressly forbidden to use other?Wikimedia projects like Wikispecies as sources for Wikipedia articles. It was actually this very issue which got this unfortunate snowball rolling down hill in the first place ...
?
Stephen

From: "Tony.Rees at csiro.au" <Tony.Rees at csiro.au>
To: stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz; dipteryx at freeler.nl; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu 
Sent: Monday, 14 May 2012 7:32 PM
Subject: RE: [Taxacom] Wikipedia vs. science

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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