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Re: [ARSCLIST] Aren't recordings original sources?



One man's opinion ...

They have a very long way to go. As long as they insist on this "democratic" mode of operation where any crackpot can hit the edit button, and in typical dot-bomb fashion they don't have a viable business model to pay a staff of experts to vet information before it's published, they will have little credibility with serious students or experts of any topic. The web-world often confuses "democracy" with mob rule. The simple fact is that in-depth knowledge is something gained through hard work and an expert is different from a wingnut with a bunch of opinions, and both shouldn't have equal power to publish into what pretends to be a fact-based "encyclopedia."

Now, that said, here's my wingnut opinion for the day -- expertise can also be an echo-chamber that is just a well-vetted myth-amplifier, so we all need to be careful to keep the windows open and the air fresh.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard L. Hess" <arclists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2008 10:53 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Aren't recordings original sources?



At 11:22 PM 2008-10-15, Steven C. Barr wrote:
--Thus, it seems, Wikipedia doesn't want anything which can be demonstrably
PROVEN to be accurate...which might explain its less-than-impressive
repuation for truth and accuracy...?!

Steven,


Did you study the link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research
???

There you will find what I wrote about in a previous post. They are TRYING to set rules for good reasons. Whether it always works or not is the discussion, but the basis of using only secondary sources that have already been vetted as a way to keep un-vetted original thinking out of their general reference work.

If nothing else, I'm finding Wikipedia a good place to find better sources--especially as more and more articles grow footnote references as the founders hoped.

Their approach is increasing the likelihood that the references used to craft articles have been peer reviewed. Their point is similar to Tom's about triangulation, just quoting original data without interpretation can get really confusing and can lead to misleading conclusions. Their assumption is if the secondary source makes the interpretation and it has been published then it is likely to be somewhat mainstream.

Cheers,

Richard


Richard L. Hess email: richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Aurora, Ontario, Canada (905) 713 6733 1-877-TAPE-FIX
Detailed contact information: http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.


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