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

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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
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