[Taxacom] Wikipedia vs. science [some wider issues]

[Jim Croft]

We have tried to address this through cultural change. No-one is
allowed to criticise the database content nor engage in ad hominem
attacks of those who created it (as tempting and therapeutic as this
may be). If you find something not as it should be, you make it so,
something missing, you add it, something superfluous, you remove it.
Or bring it to the attention of someone who can. If you are not
prepared to do these things, you shut your miserable excuse for a face
and keep moving (that is the sort of sensitive supportive people we
are here).

The idea is to turn the database into a sort of zen thing. It is
neither right nor wrong. It just is. A reflection of what we take to
be facts.

It sort of works... people edit stuff, nothing is said, nothing needs
to be said. Every now an again a systemic pattern emerges in the data
or editing, which may result in a documentation upgrade, a bit of
retraining and so on. Complex and technical interpretation sometimes
requires a bit of discussion, but the consensus, sometimes compromise,
is nearly always amicable. Or, maybe it's a case of, yeah, whatever, I
really do not care that much... :)

There is a lot of team trust and respect involved and the operation
seems to be self healing.

It might just be me in cloud cuckoo land, but the notion of
'authority' in or of the database does not loom large. The database is
just what we do. This attude to 'authority' is much the same when it
comes to humans.  Maybe it's a southern hemisphere thing. You may
regard yourself as the world authority on genus X, your peers may
agree, but unless you have published something we can read,
understand, believe and document, we really do not care.

jim

On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 11:46 PM, Roger Burks <burks.roger at gmail.com> wrote:
> This brings up some thoughts: "he who is convinced against his will,
> holds his old opinion still" is an old saying that comes to bear here.
> We live in a culture where corrections of mistakes are largely frowned
> upon, because correction carries with it connotations of disrespect
> for the resource and its personnel. Probably we would all like this to
> be otherwise, but many of us reinforce this reality daily. What's
> worse, is that public corrections are even more frowned upon, because
> then every concerned party will know of the original inaccuracy and
> its negative connotation against the entire resource.
>
> Authority is often seen as preferably unassailable, and if it is ever
> successfully assailed, then the authority becomes deprecated in some
> people's eyes. This practice strikes me as contrary to the best
> principles of science, but adherence to these principles is possibly
> beyond the capabilities of general human nature. Rising above that
> might be too much to ask or expect.
>
> Instead, it would be an improvement to many systems if we could
> correct an authority, resource, or editor without earning its eternal
> enmity or creating a situation where the truth is repressed just to
> save face.
>
> Roger
>
> On Mon, May 14, 2012 at 9:29 PM, Stephen Thorpe
> <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz> wrote:
>> The good Doug Yanega, in his attempts to reason with the immoveable mountain currently lodged at Wikipedia, argued, I suggest, something along these lines:
>>
>> scientists don't consider online databases to be reliable sources, and will never bother to publish corrections to the inevitable mistakes that such databases contain
>>
>> I do not dispute this, it is spot on, but it does rather raise some wider issues:
>>
>> So, why do scientists create and maintain online databases (e.g. WoRMS, etc.)? Who are they for? Other scientists, or general public? What do other scientists use them for (particularly since they seem not to consider them to be reliable sources)? How should others, like Wikipedia, use these online databases appropriately?
>>
>> My initial, and someone bluntly suggested answers are as follows: Scientists create and maintain online databases primarily because they can get funding to do so. I do not know if?such databases are used much by the scientific community for anything (except perhaps unfortunate guesstimations of global biodiversity!), but, if they are, then scientists?are at least better placed to?notice and ignore errors than the general public are. Perhaps, some such databases need to be reminded that they have a duty to take care and try to make the data as accurate and error free as they possibly can, since others may be relying on it for various purposes?
>>
>> Just a thought, but it could perhaps make for a useful publication if some of us got together and wrote a formal paper outlining how general purpose users, like Wikipedia, of such online taxonomic databases should use such databases, i.e. detail what sort of information/reliability such databases are offering, and what is unrealistic to expect from them. This would include such guidelines as this:
>>
>> the database itself should not be considered to be a reliable source, but merely a pointer to reliable sources. The onus is on the user to verify the offered information against the primary sources. All data offered by the database is, trivially, verifiable against the database itself, but this means little or nothing since the database itself doesn't claim to be a reliable source.
>>
>> Unfortunately, however, I cannot see too many online biodiversity databases being so?modest about what they realistically can or cannot offer. Ironically, it is the bigger aggregators of individual databses that tend to be the ones promising the most, even when many of?their source databases might be more inclined towards modesty ...
>>
>> Stephen
>
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-- 
_________________
Jim Croft ~ jim.croft at gmail.com ~ +61-2-62509499 ~ http://about.me/jrc
'Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to
pause and reflect.'
- Mark Twain
'A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point
of doubtful sanity.'
?- Robert Frost

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