Wiki archeology

[Peter Damian]

I wrote this for the Wikipediocracy blog in May 2014, about the archeology of the John Wycliffe (T-H-L) article. As I am writing a paper about the great English philosopher-theologian Robert Grosseteste (T-H-L), I did the same for his Wikipedia article.

It follows the same pattern. The core of the article is a 28 September 2002 upload from Britannica 1911. Over the last 13 years there have been hundreds of fiddly edits, formatting, linking, pictures, the usual gnomeish things, but only four substantial additions, as follows.

1. On 20 May 2005, user Stbalbach (T-C-L), an undergraduate historian who has made hundreds of contributions to Wikipedia, generally sound but often shaky, adds the part from “Grosseteste wrote a number of early works in Latin” to “highest order of the sciences”. Stbalbach also added the strange bit of the introduction that reads “A.C. Crombie calls him "the real founder of the tradition of scientific thought in medieval Oxford, and in some ways, of the modern English intellectual tradition".”

2. On 3 November 2007, Theologus (T-C-L) adds the bit from “At the same time he began lecturing in theology at Oxford” to “his writings reverberate with his own personal views and outlooks”. It is nicely written in a way that no true Wikipedian could emulate, and sure enough his user page says “I'm a medievalist who teaches at an American University in Theological Studies. I have been a professor for over 10 years and I have taught at universities in Canada, the United Kingdom and now the USA.” He adds “I have started to revise entries on theologians (many are categorized as philosophers in Wikipedia) from my small part of the historical world. Most of these entries have been drawn from public domain articles and so contain many outdated assertions or need updating in light of more recent scholarship. I might move on to thematic articles, provided I ever get the time.” He clearly didn’t get the time because he mostly stopped editing in 2009.

3. On 18 July 2009 Logicus (T-C-L) adds a trifling part about the inscription on G’s tomb.

4. Finally 11 March 2012 Dudley Miles (T-C-L) adds a nasty anachronism about how Grosseteste anticipated modern science. “Grossesteste is now believed to have had a very modern understanding of colour”; “Four centuries before Isaac Newton proposed gravity and seven centuries before the Big Bang theory, Grosseteste described the birth of the Universe in an explosion and the crystallisation of matter to form stars and planets in a set of nested spheres around Earth.”

See also Lilburne’s comments on the John Dee (T-H-L) article.

[Peter Damian]

Bernard of Chartres (T-H-L)

There is only one significant contribution on 28 October 2006. It is lifted word for word from William Turner’s, History of Philosophy (1903). The attribution was removed in November 2007 by an IP.

The Britannica article is better.

[EricBarbour]

Don't forget to add notes on these items to the book wiki. I'm going to be v. busy the next few weeks.

[Peter Damian]

John of Salisbury (T-H-L)

Britannica 1911 upload 1 December 2002. Only significant contribution by Wetman (T-C-L) on 29 August 2011.

The article retains some of the quaint 1911 turns of phrase. “His letters throw light on the constitutional struggle then agitating the English world” (changed to“His letters throw light on the constitutional struggle then agitating England”); “John's views imply a cultivated intelligence well versed in practical affairs”; “Cicero, for whom he had unbounded admiration” etc.

The modern Britannica article is better, although compact. The SEP article, by contrast, is comprehensive and magisterial. The SEP adopts the old-fashioned and outmoded approach of selecting experts to write on their specialist subjects, the approach of Wikipedia’s predecessor, Nupedia. If you ever mention such a methodology in the environs of Wikipedia, the inhabitants will snort with laughter and say “Oh ha ha doesn’t that sound a bit like Nupedia, titter, and we all know, snerk, how that ended, giggle”.

[Poetlister]

Bernard of Chartres (T-H-L)

There is only one significant contribution on 28 October 2006. It is lifted word for word from William Turner’s, History of Philosophy (1903). The attribution was removed in November 2007 by an IP.

The Britannica article is better.

To be fair to the IP, he/she may have thought that the only function of the reference was to confirm his date of death as 1125, something the IP clearly disputes because it is altered to "after 1124".

[Peter Damian]

I am developing a more systematic comparison of the SEP with Wikipedia. If you are interested you can see the results so far here.

There is one amusing result to share. The SEP article on Feminist Aesthetics is written by Carolyn Korsmeyer, who sounds (and looks) like a woman to me.




The Wikipedia article Feminist aesthetics (T-H-L), which is about 10 times shorter, is by Maximilianklein (T-C-L), who sounds like a man to me. Indeed, he likes dressing up as a pirate.

Nothing wrong with that, of course.



PS Is it me, or does the Wikipedia article read as though it belonged in Simple Wikipedia?

Kant and Hume both argued that there was universal good taste, which made Aesthetic pleasure.

[JCM]

Honestly, I think a lot of our content in the field of philosophy especially, and maybe religion and mythology, can be (and in some cases maybe should) be lifted verbatim from other sources. It's one of the reasons I am transcribing some of the articles from the old Hastings Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, so that the material from it can be added, if it is still current, to our articles. And it looks like a lot of their articles still don't even exist on wikipedia, so that might not be a bad start. One that comes to mind is AEgean religion, which has a good article in the Hastings and one in the Jones Encyclopedia of Religion, but nothing on wikipedia yet. Acehnese religion and quite a few similar articles on some of the smaller ethnicities and/or those less well known in the West are still in the same situation, unfortunately.

[Peter Damian]

Honestly, I think a lot of our content in the field of philosophy especially, and maybe religion and mythology, can be (and in some cases maybe should) be lifted verbatim from other sources. It's one of the reasons I am transcribing some of the articles from the old Hastings Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, so that the material from it can be added, if it is still current, to our articles. And it looks like a lot of their articles still don't even exist on wikipedia, so that might not be a bad start. One that comes to mind is AEgean religion, which has a good article in the Hastings and one in the Jones Encyclopedia of Religion, but nothing on wikipedia yet. Acehnese religion and quite a few similar articles on some of the smaller ethnicities and/or those less well known in the West are still in the same situation, unfortunately.

I have pointed out many times that sources like Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics (T-H-L), which is nearly 100 years old, are simply out of date, reflecting different attitudes and different standards of scholarship. The SEP by contrast is by some of the best specialists in their fields, and reflects current standards of scholarship.

It's truly ironic that everyone blathers on about technology and smartphones and whatnot as though technology were some kind of magic. Then the only stuff you can get on this ultramodern platform is from the Victorian age. It's just bizarre.

[JCM]

Honestly, I think a lot of our content in the field of philosophy especially, and maybe religion and mythology, can be (and in some cases maybe should) be lifted verbatim from other sources. It's one of the reasons I am transcribing some of the articles from the old Hastings Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, so that the material from it can be added, if it is still current, to our articles. And it looks like a lot of their articles still don't even exist on wikipedia, so that might not be a bad start. One that comes to mind is AEgean religion, which has a good article in the Hastings and one in the Jones Encyclopedia of Religion, but nothing on wikipedia yet. Acehnese religion and quite a few similar articles on some of the smaller ethnicities and/or those less well known in the West are still in the same situation, unfortunately.

I have pointed out many times that sources like Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics (T-H-L), which is nearly 100 years old, are simply out of date, reflecting different attitudes and different standards of scholarship. The SEP by contrast is by some of the best specialists in their fields, and reflects current standards of scholarship.

It's truly ironic that everyone blathers on about technology and smartphones and whatnot as though technology were some kind of magic. Then the only stuff you can get on this ultramodern platform is from the Victorian age. It's just bizarre.

The Stanford is very good, actually. I think the Macmillan probably is too, but you would probably know that better than me. I guess I should specify that I meant content on individual works of philosophy, particularly the summaries of them, where in at least a few cases the opinions of academia may not have changed much over the years. For a lot of basically "historical" beliefs and philosophies, like those of the Adipone Indians (now pretty much extinct) and the Aleutians (who converted to Russian Orthodoxy some time ago and seem to have lost most of their indigenous traditions), all we have to go on is the few documents we have from earlier days, and older sources repeating what was then known from them then will probably not be that much different from newer sources doing pretty much the same thing now. But, where appropriate, importing language from an older encyclopedia which pretty much says the same thing as newer encyclopedias (where they do) is one of maybe the better and easier ways to get at least that much material in initially. And, for some of the information, particularly the "cultural anthropological" observance of practices and traditions, which some older sources are our only real sources for, one summary of material is going to be in many cases pretty much like another.

[Peter Damian]

I've encountered this view many times from some Wikipedians. The idea is that if something happened 500 years ago, then anything written 400, 300 200 etc years ago is equally acceptable indeed interchangeable with any other, because the past is frozen. So it doesn't matter how old is the source, so long as it is 'reliable'.

And, for some of the information, particularly the "cultural anthropological" observance of practices and traditions, which some older sources are our only real sources for, one summary of material is going to be in many cases pretty much like another.

Right.

[JCM]

I've encountered this view many times from some Wikipedians. The idea is that if something happened 500 years ago, then anything written 400, 300 200 etc years ago is equally acceptable indeed interchangeable with any other, because the past is frozen. So it doesn't matter how old is the source, so long as it is 'reliable'.

And, for some of the information, particularly the "cultural anthropological" observance of practices and traditions, which some older sources are our only real sources for, one summary of material is going to be in many cases pretty much like another.

Right.

Actually, I think you missed one of the big points, which is that I said to compare the older sources to the newer ones, and include the information that is virtually the same in both. And, FWIW, this is something I talked with DGG some time ago about, specifically regarding AEgean religion, about looking at the new article and the old article, and more or less taking what the old one said where it and the new one were more or less the same, making minor edits for style changes and that sort of thing, and he agreed to it. Granted, in some cases, there are going to be some significant changes. But, having myself looked at some of the articles in 21st century Lindsay Jones Encyclopedia of Religion and the older Hastings Encyclopedia, at least some of the content in many of the articles is basically identical, with maybe some changes in terminology for newer terms or outdated terms or stuff like that. And, in some cases, like La Vallee Poussin's articles on Buddhism in the Hastings, some recent sources reviewing more recent encyclopedias in academic journals say those older articles are still the best things ever written on the subjects. Granted, time will make some changes, even in older topics, with additional older manuscripts found and the like, but some of the academics seem to say in at least some, maybe many, cases, the newer and older pieces on some topics won't necessarily be much different.

[DanMurphy]

I've encountered this view many times from some Wikipedians. The idea is that if something happened 500 years ago, then anything written 400, 300 200 etc years ago is equally acceptable indeed interchangeable with any other, because the past is frozen. So it doesn't matter how old is the source, so long as it is 'reliable'.

And, for some of the information, particularly the "cultural anthropological" observance of practices and traditions, which some older sources are our only real sources for, one summary of material is going to be in many cases pretty much like another.

Right.

Amateurs talk timelines. Scholars talk scholarship.

[Poetlister]

It's truly ironic that everyone blathers on about technology and smartphones and whatnot as though technology were some kind of magic. Then the only stuff you can get on this ultramodern platform is from the Victorian age. It's just bizarre.

Well, the reign of George V, but we know what you mean. The same is true of articles from Britannica 1911 of course. Quite a few biographies of British people are largely based on the Dictionary of National Biography (T-H-L). This is completely superseded by the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and comparison of the two sources shows the disadvantage of relying on old reference works. Is having this old material readily available, and to be fair in many cases somewhat revised and updated, better than nothing? Often it is, but sometimes it's grossly misleading. As so often with Wikipedia, it's mostly OK but you never know which bits aren't.

[JCM]

I've encountered this view many times from some Wikipedians. The idea is that if something happened 500 years ago, then anything written 400, 300 200 etc years ago is equally acceptable indeed interchangeable with any other, because the past is frozen. So it doesn't matter how old is the source, so long as it is 'reliable'.

And, for some of the information, particularly the "cultural anthropological" observance of practices and traditions, which some older sources are our only real sources for, one summary of material is going to be in many cases pretty much like another.

Right.

Amateurs talk timelines. Scholars talk scholarship.

And in your case you seem to be one of the "amateurs." I am also more than a little appalled at Peter seeking to employ such a transparent straw man argument in his own defense. If he had read my comment, which apparently he didn't, he would note that what I said was that if the more recent highly-regarded reference sources basically repeat the older highly-regarded reference sources, then that would seem to be a situation of "a difference which makes no difference is no difference." I did however specifically say that I was referring to material which is, substantially, repeated from one work to another. And, yes, if the 2006 Borchert ''Encyclopedia of Philosophy" published by Gale/Macmillan, or similar highly-regarded reference work, does basically repeat the details or otherwise substantively basically repeat what a PD source says, to the point that the only differences are what might be called variations in non-specialist phrasing, there would be no reason to not use the older source. If there are differences, of course, that would be different.

Perhaps Peter should be less quick to put down others in such an ill-informed, almost knee-jerk, way and actually respond to what they say, rather than attempt to basically create a straw man to argue against.

[Peter Damian]

I've encountered this view many times from some Wikipedians. The idea is that if something happened 500 years ago, then anything written 400, 300 200 etc years ago is equally acceptable indeed interchangeable with any other, because the past is frozen. So it doesn't matter how old is the source, so long as it is 'reliable'.

And, for some of the information, particularly the "cultural anthropological" observance of practices and traditions, which some older sources are our only real sources for, one summary of material is going to be in many cases pretty much like another.

Right.

Amateurs talk timelines. Scholars talk scholarship.

And in your case you seem to be one of the "amateurs." I am also more than a little appalled at Peter seeking to employ such a transparent straw man argument in his own defense. If he had read my comment, which apparently he didn't, he would note that what I said was that if the more recent highly-regarded reference sources basically repeat the older highly-regarded reference sources, then that would seem to be a situation of "a difference which makes no difference is no difference." I did however specifically say that I was referring to material which is, substantially, repeated from one work to another. And, yes, if the 2006 Borchert ''Encyclopedia of Philosophy" published by Gale/Macmillan, or similar highly-regarded reference work, does basically repeat the details or otherwise substantively basically repeat what a PD source says, to the point that the only differences are what might be called variations in non-specialist phrasing, there would be no reason to not use the older source. If there are differences, of course, that would be different.

Perhaps Peter should be less quick to put down others in such an ill-informed, almost knee-jerk, way and actually respond to what they say, rather than attempt to basically create a straw man to argue against.

You specifically said that one summary of material is going to be in many cases pretty much like another. That's the problem. Practically all summaries require some form of interpretation, and in history (and religion) everything is interpretation.

[Peter Damian]

Also, it may happen that older sources agree with contemporary ones, but how are we to tell without checking? But if we do so, we may as well use the contemporary ones. It’s hard work, but that’s the whole Nupedia problem. Writing an accurate reference work is hard, and takes a long time. Suppose we use the Catholic Encyclopedia article on Ockham.

Fourteenth-century Scholastic philosopher and controversial writer, born at or near the village of Ockham in Surrey, England, about 1280; died probably at Munich, about 1349.

OK that’s pretty much right, although we are already hitting subjective territory with ‘controversial’. He may not have been born in Ockham, that’s a speculation based on his name. It may have been Woking, haha.

He is said to have studied at Merton College, Oxford, and to have had John Duns Scotus for teacher. At an early age he entered the Order of St. Francis.

Certainly a Franciscan. But Merton College? And he was clearly influenced by Scotus, because he quotes him a lot. Was he taught by him?

Towards 1310 he went to Paris, where he may have had Scotus once more for a teacher. About 1320 he became a teacher (magister) at the University of Paris.

No contemporary sources mention Paris. And since Scotus left Paris in 1307 and died in Cologne in 1308, it’s unlikely Ockham could have met him ‘towards 1310’.

During this portion of his career he composed his works on Aristotelean physics and on logic. In 1323 he resigned his chair at the university in order to devote himself to ecclesiastical politics. In the controversies which were waged at that time between the advocates of the papacy and those who supported the claims of the civil power, he threw his lot with the imperial party, and contributed to the polemical literature of the day a number of pamphlets and treatises, of which the most important are "Opus nonaginta dierum", "Compendium errorum Joannis Papæ XXII", "Quæstiones octo de auctoritate summi pontificis".

That’s probably right.

He was cited before the pontifical Court at Avignon in 1328, but managed to escape and join John of Jandun and Marsilius of Padua, who had taken refuge at the Court of Louis of Bavaria. It was to Louis that he made the boastful offer, "Tu me defendas gladio; ego te defendam calamo".

Correct, but the defending with the pen bit is almost certainly apocryphal.

My point is, how do you filter the accurate parts out from the bits that aren’t? Indiscriminately banging together stuff you have cobbled together from obsolete sources using computer programs is not the way.

[Ross McPherson]

Peter, I am wondering how a scholar like you can so misunderstand the purpose of a general encyclopaedia. Surely its purpose is to provide summaries that can be incorporated into general knowledge, offering a broad view that may blur some of the details but which is basically correct for whatever use the ordinary reader may put it to.

The Catholic Encyclopaedia is more subject-specific than Wikipedia but it doesn’t need to be much more accurate in its medieval philosphy articles - its focus is not restricted to philosophy, let alone medieval philosophy. In other words, stop carping about the inadequate standards of the broad view and start writing articles for encyclopaedia’s that are really subject-specific, such as SEP, if they will accept your work. Or maybe you should create your own online encyclopaedia/blog. Wikipedia can never enable your level of expertise and it is unreasonable for you to hope that it will.

This is where I think WP is doomed to fail. People generally go to it for the fun facts, the stuff that can be squeezed into infoboxes, and it is very good at that. But guys like you keep trying to turn it into something much more high-brow. The devil is in the details. I might trust you with the details but there are lots of Wikipedians I don’t trust. Your attempts to gear WP up to your standards just enables the POV artists to gear it to theirs. No scholar can compete with that shit and they will hammer you again and again until you quit in disgust or become no better than they are.

Give Wikip[edia up as lost cause, a nest of fun facts that nodoby with even half a brain gives much credence. Those who do mistake it for the gospel truth about everything are unlikely to be studying medieval philosophy to any standard, let alone yours.

[Notvelty]

I've encountered this view many times from some Wikipedians. The idea is that if something happened 500 years ago, then anything written 400, 300 200 etc years ago is equally acceptable indeed interchangeable with any other, because the past is frozen. So it doesn't matter how old is the source, so long as it is 'reliable'.

And, for some of the information, particularly the "cultural anthropological" observance of practices and traditions, which some older sources are our only real sources for, one summary of material is going to be in many cases pretty much like another.

Right.

Amateurs talk timelines. Scholars talk scholarship.

And in your case you seem to be one of the "amateurs." I am also more than a little appalled at Peter seeking to employ such a transparent straw man argument in his own defense. If he had read my comment, which apparently he didn't, he would note that what I said was that if the more recent highly-regarded reference sources basically repeat the older highly-regarded reference sources, then that would seem to be a situation of "a difference which makes no difference is no difference." I did however specifically say that I was referring to material which is, substantially, repeated from one work to another. And, yes, if the 2006 Borchert ''Encyclopedia of Philosophy" published by Gale/Macmillan, or similar highly-regarded reference work, does basically repeat the details or otherwise substantively basically repeat what a PD source says, to the point that the only differences are what might be called variations in non-specialist phrasing, there would be no reason to not use the older source. If there are differences, of course, that would be different.

Perhaps Peter should be less quick to put down others in such an ill-informed, almost knee-jerk, way and actually respond to what they say, rather than attempt to basically create a straw man to argue against.

You specifically said that one summary of material is going to be in many cases pretty much like another. That's the problem. Practically all summaries require some form of interpretation, and in history (and religion) everything is interpretation.

Don't get side-tracked by the goal-post shifting, it's intentional.

What JCM is saying amounts to an argument that we should ignore the however many years of new work since the old version and, through the magic of google, erase the recent worthwhile work by people like you so that people like him can get their sub-standard summaries of old knowledge up in lights.

It is the metaphorical r... hmm the metaphorical pillage of recognition and respect from the institution that is scholarship by the institution that is epitomised by Pirate Bay.

Stop. It. Stealing. Shut. It. Down.

[Ross McPherson]

Actually, now I come to think of it, Google is already appropriating the infobox stuff and outfits like SEP have got the fine details and interpretations sewn up. WP has nowhere to go. It's a cheery thought.

[Notvelty]

Actually, now I come to think of it, Google is already appropriating the infobox stuff and outfits like SEP have got the fine details and interpretations sewn up. WP has nowhere to go. It's a cheery thought.

Nowhere except the front of Google.

A search for "Edward Zanta", the Principal Editor of SEP (http://plato.stanford.edu/info.html) does not show up any SEP results for the first five pages of my google search.

A search for "philosophers" has SEP come up for me on the second page of results. There are no SEP entries on the first page. Wikipedia has two.

"Immanuel Kant" gets an SEP list on the front page, but off screen for a standard sized monitor, resolution and text size.

John Stuart Mill and John Mill is better. Now SEP is only just under the video suggestion.

Karl Marx is page 2.

To say that SEP has a hold on "fine details and interpretations" is like saying that Betamax had a hold on video recording quality. It might well be true, but without the exposure and use, it's going to become a part of history (and given the juxtaposition of Mill and Marx, we know how much attention people pay to history).

[Ross McPherson]

Actually, now I come to think of it, Google is already appropriating the infobox stuff and outfits like SEP have got the fine details and interpretations sewn up. WP has nowhere to go. It's a cheery thought.

Nowhere except the front of Google.

A search for "Edward Zanta", the Principal Editor of SEP (http://plato.stanford.edu/info.html) does not show up any SEP results for the first five pages of my google search.

A search for "philosophers" has SEP come up for me on the second page of results. There are no SEP entries on the first page. Wikipedia has two.

"Immanuel Kant" gets an SEP list on the front page, but off screen for a standard sized monitor, resolution and text size.

John Stuart Mill and John Mill is better. Now SEP is only just under the video suggestion.

Karl Marx is page 2.

To say that SEP has a hold on "fine details and interpretations" is like saying that Betamax had a hold on video recording quality. It might well be true, but without the exposure and use, it's going to become a part of history (and given the juxtaposition of Mill and Marx, we know how much attention people pay to history).

Good argument! Except quality usually wins out in the end. Anyway, I've already got my party hat on and the streamers out, so you are too late to spoil things for me today.

[Notvelty]

Good argument! Except quality usually wins out in the end.

I'm not sure how you can make that claim without some sort of evidence when I just finished what I wrote with a reference to a better technology that failed to win out because of a lack of marketing/exposure.

While you're thinking of a counter example, here's another one from me: direct current in distribution networks.

[Ross McPherson]

Taking the party horn out of my mouth, let me say that town criers didn't stop newspapers, newspapers didn't stop radio, radio didn't stop tv. Communication technology and platforms almost universally improve from one generation to the next unless a disaster intervenes. I'm not one of the technology geeks here so I can't match you on nerdy stuff like beta-something or other, though alpha-something or other sounds like a reasonable bet to my untutored mind. And I did say usually not always. So it makes sense to me that WP is caught between a rock and a hard place and it will probably be ground into flotsam and jetsam for other sites to pick over some time in a future near you and me. Call me a dreamer if you like! Now I have another streamer to let fly.

[JCM]

I've encountered this view many times from some Wikipedians. The idea is that if something happened 500 years ago, then anything written 400, 300 200 etc years ago is equally acceptable indeed interchangeable with any other, because the past is frozen. So it doesn't matter how old is the source, so long as it is 'reliable'.

And, for some of the information, particularly the "cultural anthropological" observance of practices and traditions, which some older sources are our only real sources for, one summary of material is going to be in many cases pretty much like another.

Right.

Amateurs talk timelines. Scholars talk scholarship.

And in your case you seem to be one of the "amateurs." I am also more than a little appalled at Peter seeking to employ such a transparent straw man argument in his own defense. If he had read my comment, which apparently he didn't, he would note that what I said was that if the more recent highly-regarded reference sources basically repeat the older highly-regarded reference sources, then that would seem to be a situation of "a difference which makes no difference is no difference." I did however specifically say that I was referring to material which is, substantially, repeated from one work to another. And, yes, if the 2006 Borchert ''Encyclopedia of Philosophy" published by Gale/Macmillan, or similar highly-regarded reference work, does basically repeat the details or otherwise substantively basically repeat what a PD source says, to the point that the only differences are what might be called variations in non-specialist phrasing, there would be no reason to not use the older source. If there are differences, of course, that would be different.

Perhaps Peter should be less quick to put down others in such an ill-informed, almost knee-jerk, way and actually respond to what they say, rather than attempt to basically create a straw man to argue against.

You specifically said that one summary of material is going to be in many cases pretty much like another. That's the problem. Practically all summaries require some form of interpretation, and in history (and religion) everything is interpretation.

Don't get side-tracked by the goal-post shifting, it's intentional.

What JCM is saying amounts to an argument that we should ignore the however many years of new work since the old version and, through the magic of google, erase the recent worthwhile work by people like you so that people like him can get their sub-standard summaries of old knowledge up in lights.

It is the metaphorical r... hmm the metaphorical pillage of recognition and respect from the institution that is scholarship by the institution that is epitomised by Pirate Bay.

Stop. It. Stealing. Shut. It. Down.

Some might not unreasonably call that bullshit, but actually only what I believe we have come to expect from you. Maybe if you came out of mom's basement once in a while you might realize that. Something that is in the PD cannot be stolen, and there is nothing wrong in taking some of the best statements that may ever have been written as what they are, with proper attribution. Many might even say it is really just acknowledging quality where quality exists. If you were ever to look at any reference works, which I guess would involve reading that might explain it actually, you might realize that even in the 2nd edition of the more recent Eliade/Jones ''Encyclopedia of Religion'' for the articles they kept from the earlier edition, they included the articles from the 1st edition unchanged, if the author had died and was not able to update it themselves, and even in some of the extensions for the second edition the writers described the article from the first edition as describing the topic better than they could do themselves, and used their space to develop subtopics.

Also, it should be worth noting that it isn't only in philosophy where, at least sometimes, a topic can continue to be studied by academia for several years without real substantive changes to the basic "encyclopedic" content related to it. One case that comes to mind is the question of the dating of the first gospel. About a hundred years ago, more or less, the academic consensus was that it was written at least a few years after Jesus's death, but before the end of the first century, probably a few years after the fall of the temple. A recent academic source has discussed the 12 new theories put forward by academia since 1985, starting with that year because there was source published then to describe all the new theories that had been put forward up to that date. And, despite the dozen or more new academic theories which have been put forward in the past hundred years, the current academic consensus about the dating of the first gospel is, you guessed it, that it was written at least a few years after Jesus's death, but before the end of the first century, probably a few years after the fall of the temple. Or, in other words, the same as it was earlier. For all the academic study and the new theories and papers and sometimes sensationalist works, none of them had apparently made any substantive changes to the prevailing academic consensus.

[Peter Damian]

Peter, I am wondering how a scholar like you can so misunderstand the purpose of a general encyclopaedia. Surely its purpose is to provide summaries that can be incorporated into general knowledge, offering a broad view that may blur some of the details but which is basically correct for whatever use the ordinary reader may put it to.

The Catholic Encyclopaedia is more subject-specific than Wikipedia but it doesn’t need to be much more accurate in its medieval philosphy articles - its focus is not restricted to philosophy, let alone medieval philosophy. In other words, stop carping about the inadequate standards of the broad view and start writing articles for encyclopaedia’s that are really subject-specific, such as SEP, if they will accept your work. Or maybe you should create your own online encyclopaedia/blog. Wikipedia can never enable your level of expertise and it is unreasonable for you to hope that it will.

This is where I think WP is doomed to fail. People generally go to it for the fun facts, the stuff that can be squeezed into infoboxes, and it is very good at that. But guys like you keep trying to turn it into something much more high-brow. The devil is in the details. I might trust you with the details but there are lots of Wikipedians I don’t trust. Your attempts to gear WP up to your standards just enables the POV artists to gear it to theirs. No scholar can compete with that shit and they will hammer you again and again until you quit in disgust or become no better than they are.

Give Wikip[edia up as lost cause, a nest of fun facts that nodoby with even half a brain gives much credence. Those who do mistake it for the gospel truth about everything are unlikely to be studying medieval philosophy to any standard, let alone yours.

To avoid all misunderstanding (which I thought I had done at the very beginning) I don't think SEP is a good model for a generalist reference work like Wikipedia. All writing has to be written with a specific audience in mind. The problem is that Wikipedia is inaccurate and bad, and misleading, even on its own terms. And when it is 'good', like the mathematics articles, it is incomprehensible.

It is actually far more difficult to write on a difficult subject for a general audience, than for a specialist one.

[Peter Damian]

Also, it should be worth noting that it isn't only in philosophy where, at least sometimes, a topic can continue to be studied by academia for several years without real substantive changes to the basic "encyclopedic" content related to it.

Really?

[Poetlister]

Good argument! Except quality usually wins out in the end.

That's just not true. See for example

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/top ... eshams-law

[Anothera]

For all the academic study and the new theories and papers and sometimes sensationalist works, none of them had apparently made any substantive changes to the prevailing academic consensus.

Great point. There are a lot of sensational claims made in recent work (it is one path for a scholar to launch a career and make a name for her/himself). There are errors made in recent work. These things tend to shake out only under subsequent and time-consuming examination and re-examination. Academic consensus seldom changes rapidly, and tilting an article toward recent work(s) as if the shiny newest papers are the best can very often be misrepresentative.

[Ross McPherson]

To avoid all misunderstanding (which I thought I had done at the very beginning) I don't think SEP is a good model for a generalist reference work like Wikipedia. All writing has to be written with a specific audience in mind. The problem is that Wikipedia is inaccurate and bad, and misleading, even on its own terms. And when it is 'good', like the mathematics articles, it is incomprehensible.

It is actually far more difficult to write on a difficult subject for a general audience, than for a specialist one.

I read this bit and it seemed like a ringing endorsement:
“The SEP article, by contrast, is comprehensive and magisterial.”

So I cruised over the next sentence without noticing a bump:
“The SEP adopts the old-fashioned and outmoded approach of selecting experts to write on their specialist subjects, the approach of Wikipedia’s predecessor, Nupedia.”

I understand what you mean by this – the general reader doesn’t want to read it. It is is not user-friendly for novices. Well hey, join SEP and get them writing articles structured for different levels of reading. You can justify it methodologically because simple writing of complex material requires deep understanding: which is why you say it is far more difficult writing for a general audience. But hey again, that challenge is easier than inventing a whole new vocabulary, the way the ancient philosophers had to do. So there is your mission if you are determined to be a populist. You have a pigeon’s chance in a cattery of getting your way in a crowd-sourced encyclopaedia. Or, to further exhaust people’s tolerance of analogies, Wikipedians go into those woods with an axe, you go in with a scalpel.

It is a GENERAL ENNCYCLOPAEDIA. The warts you want to remove are not important in that scheme of things. If I am right, sites like SEP are going to get bigger and better. WP is doomed. You can help speed up its destruction by going in there with absurd expectations but many others are already doing that. They are fighting there over the details and the interpretations not over the basic facts a general audience wants to know. The fighting is its lifeblood too, which is why you want to go back. Its sexy. But it will burn itself out and a lot of people get hurt in the process. Like a bar-room brawl.

Anyhow, you seemed in need of a lecture. Now go back to your desk and get on with it.

@Anothera: that is what peer reviewed journals are for.

[Anothera]

@Anothera: that is what peer reviewed journals are for.

Yup, they are a good source, and generally weed out the more sensational aspects, even moreso than books published by most academic presses. However, my point still stands that recent works—including publication in a peer reviewed journal—does not mean that a scholar's position represents the widespread consensus. Publication in a journal is certainly evidence of notability (as are related followups published by other scholars) when properly qualified, but it is not at all uncommon even in peer reviewed journals for novel studies and theories to subsequently be criticized, overturned, withdrawn or simply consigned to the ash-heap of fringe and minority views.

[Ross McPherson]

@Anothera: that is what peer reviewed journals are for.

Yup, they are a good source, and generally weed out the more sensational aspects, even moreso than books published by most academic presses. However, my point still stands that recent works—including publication in a peer reviewed journal—does not mean that a scholar's position represents the widespread consensus. Publication in a journal is certainly evidence of notability (as are related followups published by other scholars) when properly qualified, but it is not at all uncommon even in peer reviewed journals for novel studies and theories to subsequently be criticized, overturned, withdrawn or simply consigned to the ash-heap of fringe and minority views.

Some years ago there was concern in the academic community about peer review journals etc stifling innovation. I am not sure what they think now but the reality is that both old and new theories get thrown out or adapted in time. You can't discredit a well received paper or book on the grounds that it is too soon to know if it is right or wrong, because when is the time to know? The poet Horace complained about the obsession with old ways. I would quote his remarks but I can't be bothered to look it up and nobody here but Peter would understand it anyway. What I mean is, the issue you are raising is as old as the hills. Horace got 'published' in spite of resistance to new ideas and ways, and now he is the old way and he wouldn't get published today, except for academics. Maybe more problems are created at WP by resistance to new theories rather than by the acceptance of them. I can think of one example at WP where state-of-the-art research was rejected in order to preserve misconceptions, as a way to promote a new, anti-social POV. Enough of that.

[Notvelty]

Taking the party horn out of my mouth, let me say that town criers didn't stop newspapers, newspapers didn't stop radio, radio didn't stop tv.

In every single case you've cited the new technology had greater marketing reach. Every single one.

Communication technology and platforms almost universally improve from one generation to the next unless a disaster intervenes.

I'm not sure what this has to do with anything. No one is suggesting that what is wrong with Wikipedia is the internet. Indeed, it is the fact that Wikipedia is restricting real academic access to the internet and the companion recognition and therefore capacity to earn an income to support their continued academic activity that is the problem.

I'm not one of the technology geeks here so I can't match you on nerdy stuff like beta-something or other, though alpha-something or other sounds like a reasonable bet to my untutored mind.

Oh come -on-. Surely everyone over the age of 35 knows about Beta vs VHS?

And I did say usually not always. So it makes sense to me that WP is caught between a rock and a hard place and it will probably be ground into flotsam and jetsam for other sites to pick over some time in a future near you and me.

I'm not nearly so optimistic. Neither the rock nor the hard place seem to be capable of restricting Wikipedia while they are starved of access to the leading communications platform. A change in platform may well pave the way, but it is concerning to me that any such new platform will only have the bones of Wikipedia to pick over - bones that have none of the learning and scholarship of the last 50 to 100 years available because (for example) someone's copied a 19th century encyclopedia of philosophy into it.

[Notvelty]

Good argument! Except quality usually wins out in the end.

That's just not true. See for example

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/top ... eshams-law

Wikipedia is the demand-side economics of the internet.

[Anothera]

You can't discredit a well received paper or book on the grounds that it is too soon to know if it is right or wrong, because when is the time to know?

As you say, the key is that it has been "well received" in the relevant field, and that very seldom happens overnight. Once novel material from a peer-reviewed article or scholarly book begins to be positively cited by other scholars in the field, it becomes at least a minority view within that field. Once the material begins to be included in textbooks and other references, it may be assumed to have broad support within a field. A single, novel theory, speculation, study or construct without support in other scholarship is not a reliable basis for a statement if an encyclopedia's editors truly are reporting the scholarship, rather than synthesizing a viewpoint. Note, I'm talking about novel or fringe observations published. Most peer-reviewed journal articles are laden with statements cited to other scholars, and that material may be notable and/or reflect mainstream scholarship (though an author may draw novel, lone-wolf conclusions not supported by the wider field). I'm certain most of us have come across some off-base premises, unsupported presumptions, erroneous or falsified data, errant logic and unjustified conclusions in peer-reviewed papers over the years, thus there does need to be caution on attributing significant academic support—which usually can be fairly easily demonstrated with backup citations—for recent publications.

Not that it matters much, because Wikipedia doesn't seem too interested in upholding its verifiability policies. Just get 2 or 3 cranks together to form a consensus for unreliable material and Wikipedia's dispute resolution will support that against another editor's stack of solid citations. These days, fringe POV pushers don't even need to cite (let alone accurately cite) a single reliable source to keep an article skewed toward their viewpoint. Who wants to bother to look at content, when there is so much pleasure to be had from bullying away at people trying to point at what scholars actually say. The focus has been side-tracked onto behavior, rather than reliable reporting, which is astounding for a project claiming to be an encyclopedia.

[Ross McPherson]

@Notvelty
@Anothera

Well Wikipedia is dead as far as I am concerned so the arguements about it are all academic from my point of view.

And we are right, I think you'll say,
To argue in this kind of way;
And I am right,
And you are right,
And all is right — too-loo-ral-lay!

(Pish-Tush in the Mikado)

[Peter Damian]

I stumbled across Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas (T-H-L) which is eerily good for a Wikipedia article, then found it had been written by someone called Larvatus (T-C-L). Blocked in October 2009 for sockpuppetry, legal threats you name it. Identifies as Michael Zeleny AT post.harvard.edu. The SPI is here, and this arbitration case suggests the underlying, quite strange, story. (it involves JzG (T-C-L), for a start, but it’s stranger than that).

Live Journal, more backstory.

[JCM]

Also, it should be worth noting that it isn't only in philosophy where, at least sometimes, a topic can continue to be studied by academia for several years without real substantive changes to the basic "encyclopedic" content related to it.

Really?

Yes, really. As I had said above, the dozens of new theories about the first gospel in the past hundred years, and it has been dozens, are all, well, fringe and/or minority theories which have, for better or worse, received little if any support. That being the case, the amount of material in a standard encyclopedic work on the Gospel of Matthew would be basically unchanged. An article on the History of study of the Gospel of Matthew would of course be changed to reflect all the minority theories, but that would be only a smallish subsection of the main article, and there is no reason to believe that the short summary of the existing views on the topic would be changed at all.

And, actually, particularly where there is no sort of direct recent development in evidence, which happens fairly often, and no immediately obvious changes in the background data, there is no particular reason for the summary of the existing consensus academic viewpoint on a topic to be changed. Considering that an encyclopedia is, basically, just that, a summary of the existing consensus academic viewpoint on a topic, that would mean the encyclopedic content would remain unchanged as well.

I can think of some old Etruscan myths and legends as examples. We have some record of their content, but, given the lack of awareness of the broader system of Etruscan mythology, in many cases we have no clear idea what they are supposed to mean, which of the characters involved is more significant to the mythic system and which less if at all, or even when and where it started. That being the case, in many cases the sources just repeat the story and say something along the lines of "we have no really good ideas what the story is supposed to convey," and that is, to the degree that a lot of these stories are covered in reference sources, what the sources say still.