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

[Roger Burks]

Well if this holds true consistently, then this approach should be a
positive model for a great deal of future work. The first reaction in
a scientific setting should not be "who is he to question the king?"
whenever someone brings any little minor inaccuracy to light. Even
when I am a world authority on something, I can be wrong. Others share
this shortcoming.

Roger

On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 11:22 PM, Jim Croft <jim.croft at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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