Stanford's Authoritative Alternative To Wikipedia 355
eldavojohn writes "For decades, Stanford has been working on a different kind of Wikipedia. It might even be considered closer to a peer-reviewed journal, since you have get submissions past a 120 person group of leading philosophers around the world, not to mention Stanford's administration. It has several layers of approval, but the authoritative model produces high quality content — even if it only amounts to 1,200 articles. Content you can read straight through to find everything pertinent — not hop around following link after link like the regular Wikipedia. You might question the need for this, but one of the originators says, 'Our model is authoritative. [Wikipedia's] model is one an academic isn't going to be attracted to. If you are a young academic, who might spend six months preparing a great article on Thomas Aquinas, you're not going to publish in a place where anyone can come along and change this.' The site has articles covering topics from Quantum Computing to technical luminaries like Kurt Friedrich Gödel and Alan Turing. The principal editor said, 'It's the natural thing to do. I'm surprised no one is doing it for the other disciplines.'"
Academics (Score:5, Insightful)
My experience in academia taught me that there was no such thing as the "authoritative" source. If one scholar thought one thing about a particular subject, there was always at least one other scholar who disagreed with him/her. Most of the encyclopedia articles written in more scholarly encyclopedias (like Britannica) are therefore usually written by a single scholar, not a crowd of them. Get a crowd of these yahoos together and odds are you won't even get them to agree on what time it is. I've sat in on meetings where grown Ph.D.'s argued like children over so-and-so getting to teach a 100-level class that someone else wanted to teach (because so-and-so is an idiot who disagreed with them in some journal article written 20 years ago). Any attempt to get agreement out of scholars usually just results in really bland "committee" history (the kind some prevalent in so many unreadable textbooks). Such controversy-free scholarly writing is bizarre at best, absolutely misleading at worst.
For all the ribbing it takes, my experience with Wikipedia is that it's generally pretty reliable. In the subjects of my narrow areas of expertise, I've found it to be pretty accurate--or at least as accurate as any other conventional source (i.e. Britannica). Of course, scholars don't like it because they don't get paid to write articles for it (the way they often do in encyclopedias) and writing for it gets them no tenure-track kudos in the publish-or-perish world. That means most scholars are never going to be happy with Wikipedia. And that has nothing to do with its purported lack of accuracy, but rather scholarly politics.
Awesome! (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that's great... (Score:5, Insightful)
If all you want is information on philosophy. I'd like to see similar encyclopedias on other disciplines, like physics or engineering.
But if you want a track listing for Led Zeppelin IV, or just want to do some personal research like I did before my eye surgeries, or for a slashdot argument, Wikipedia is the place to go.
If you're doing academic research, it's a good pointer to citable publications and articles. And I rather like having to click to read about related stuff; it keeps me from having to go over stuff I may already understand.
Why I Use Wikipedia (Score:1, Insightful)
It has an article for everything. I can find the names of different fallacies, book summaries, the date a movie came out, or info on the latest game by ID Software all in one place. It's up to date, it doesn't need to be perfect that's not the way I use it.
The readability seems to be questionable. (Score:5, Insightful)
This piqued my interest so I took a look at an article on "Actualism". Here is the first paragraph:
To understand the thesis of actualism, consider the following example. Imagine a race of beings — call them ‘Aliens’ — that is very different from any life-form that exists anywhere in the universe; different enough, in fact, that no actually existing thing could have been an Alien, any more than a given gorilla could have been a fruitfly. Now, even though there are no Aliens, it seems intuitively the case that there could have been such things. After all, life might have evolved very differently than the way it did in fact. For example, if the fundamental physical constants or the laws of evolution had been slightly different, very different kinds of things might have existed. So in virtue of what is it true that there could have been Aliens when in fact there are none, and when, moreover, nothing that exists in fact could have been an Alien?
If this is a representative sample then I'll stick to wikipedia. Can someone decipher that last sentence for me? I've read it several times and I can't seem to grasp what it is saying.
Re:tags are correct (Score:3, Insightful)
Translation: "I don't understand a lot of what these people say, but I am reluctant to believe that there could be anything missing in my own education or intelligence, therefore I will ridicule the authors instead."
Re:Tough crowd here (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been struck by the negative opinions of the discipline of philosophy on Slashdot over the last few years. Lots of people saying "No empirical testing? Then it's crap!", without apparently realizing that vital questions they have to face in everyday life, such as ethics, are part of philosophy. It's not just all fanciful proofs of God or poststructural interpretations of classic literature.
Yes, many people seem to be really hung up on the fact that philosophy is not science. Unfortunately for them almost all of science is based on metaphysics and the scientific method (the very tool they are are using to heap scorn on philosophy) is the result of epistemology. Philosophy is thinking about thinking; it's a meta-subject. It will always have value as long as people are eager to have their ideas criticized. Unfortunately most of the people saying "No empirical testing? Then it's crap!" are the least scientific and the most dogmatic. As long as philosophy doesn't try to be or claim to be science there is no problem here. They serve complementary functions.
Re:Tough crowd here (Score:2, Insightful)
They also don't realize that major areas of philosophy underlay empiricism. Specifically metaphysics (the study of the nature of existence) and epistemology (the study of the nature of knowledge). If you are doing physical science you are assuming certain metaphysical and epistemic conclusions. You may not be interested in them, but, as the cliche goes, they are interested in you. Combine that with the fact that another areas of philosophy, logic, underlies mathematics and you have one very fundamental discipline.
On the other hand, I've seen what gets classified under 'metaphysics' in the bookstore so I can't blame the laymen for not understanding what philosophy is actually about.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:tags are correct (Score:5, Insightful)
No, translation: most people who are close to the material are generally incapable of communicating it to people who are not. This is not a lack of education or intelligence on the part of the others, but rather a lack of distance on the part of the authors.
No human being alive is capable of specializing in every single area of every single field simultaneously. There is simply not enough time in a human's lifespan. Most people are either generalists who specialize in all aspects of a single field with limited depth or specialists who focus on a handful of specific areas of a field. For example, on top of a broad general CS background, I have specialized CS knowledge in storage systems, with somewhat less specialized knowledge of security, networking, and a few other areas. I also have a background in communications with an emphasis in production (radio/TV). Although I can understand papers written about other areas of computing, it will generally take a lot longer for me to figure out the meaning of a highly technical paper in the field of crypto research than in the field of storage systems. That doesn't reflect a lack of education so much as a fundamental inability to specialize in every possible area at once.
This is why technical communication is hard, and why good technical writers are so valuable. It takes a special skill set to be able to both understand a piece of complex information and still communicate it in a way that is readily understandable to someone who is not intimately familiar with the jargon of a particular area of specialization within a field. When it comes to being understood by a more general audience within a given field (but outside the area of specialization), academic papers are among the worst examples of technical communication out there, often eschewing all sense of context in order to limit the amount of time spent writing so that they can focus on research. This is why peer-reviewed journal articles are quite often rewritten in a more intelligible form for broader consumption.
There's nothing inherently wrong with that model---both the precise, jargon-filled, rapidly written journal articles and the parsed, compiled, and summarized versions serve valuable purposes---but sadly, mistakes are often made when technical writers interpret those initial journal articles and try to make them comprehensible to people outside that area of specialization. That's why there is a real need for a continuous feedback loop with the people who write the original articles. Unfortunately, quite often this feedback loop does not exist. And that is worth criticizing.
I will almost certainly be criticized for this post using too much jargon. I can already see it coming....
Re:Academics (Score:3, Insightful)
But there is more fundamental reason why Wikipedia is not only an acceptable, but preferable, replacement to a printed encyclopedia. Encyclopedias should never be trusted as a reliable secondary source for research. They will always contain factual errors, misinterpretations, and misprints, as any source will. Therefore they are to be used as a way to get a general overview for a new topic, which will then propel a researcher to more reliable sources. An encyclopedia should not even be allowed as a counted source in a class, though it should be cited if used. Wikipedia, in the current cited form, therefore is superior as it more likely that researches will read the primary and trusted secondary sources rather than rely on an untrusted source.
An online encyclopedia that merely attempts to mimic the offline form which grew from the vagaries of the publishing industry is not doing anything useful, even if free. A mid 20th century paper edition of the britannica, which is still useful, is under $100, which is cheap. An online encyclopedia is by necessity going to look different and have different priorities. Wikipedia is one increment of that evolution.
Re:Academics (Score:5, Insightful)
My experience in academia taught me that there was no such thing as the "authoritative" source.
My impression of the term "authoritative" in an academic context is that it usually doesn't mean "correct" so much as "citable". Someone is an "authority" in that they've actually done some research or survey or study, and they are citing their own work and their own conclusions, so you are thereby allowed to cite them citing their own work. When you cite them, it doesn't mean that what you've said is correct. It means that what you've said can be backed up by someone else with supposed expertise.
And so the problem with the Wikipedia (and encyclopedias in general) is that they are not primary sources, and generally no particular person is claiming responsibility for the articles. That doesn't necessarily make them less accurate or less reliable, but it does mean they're less authoritative.
If that doesn't make it clear, think about the word "official". You get an official statement from a business. Is it more true than an unofficial statement? Not necessarily. What's the difference? There is some official source of the statement that you can cite. I can go to the Apple website and find a claim that Apple iPads are "magical", and I can cite that as an official statement from Apple. I may be able to find a Wikipedia article that says that iPads are not "magical", which would not be official in any way. "Official" has nothing to do with truth, it's just about having a source. "Authoritative" is sometimes used with a similar meaning.
Sokal affair (Score:4, Insightful)
review? (Score:3, Insightful)
As an ultimate answer to this question one would like to have something similar to Bell's (1964) famous theorem, i.e., a succinct crispy statement of the fundamental difference between quantum and classical systems, encapsulated in the non-commutative character of observables.
- It is not clear to me that the adjective "crispy" should ever be used to modify the noun "statement" in a professional publication. - Even so, a comma should be inserted between two consecutive adjectives: "a succinct, crispy statement" - 120 reviewers: fail
Re:Academics (Score:3, Insightful)
Wikipedia is a sausage factory in a glass house. Far too much information about the information to escape that queasy feeling. I think this is a good thing. Too much of our appeal to authority is not having to know which ingredients came from China, and the level of lead paint in the soil there.
Here's a lede sentence on Godel from SEP:
What a thicket of weasel words only an academic could love. There's not a primitive element of this statement that any pair of logicians would reliably agree upon. It's a statement of rough consensus right out of statistical mechanics. List every field of mathematical logic? Different lists. Which of his works touched these fields? Different lists. "I never touched upon that woman." List of cases (is that a euphemism for "publications"?) over which to evaluate the majority predicate most? Different lists.
It's one part sentiment and three parts genuflect. The writer is declaring by means of this stylistic dodge "I'm trying not to bore you so close to the beginning, so I'm saving up the deep breathing for later".
I'm personally not that keen on sole authorship moderated by graphite rods. If Feynman wrote it, F the committee review. If Gell-Mann wrote it, F the committee review. If Feynman and Gell-Mann wrote it together, and a committee polished it up until I can't tell the difference, F the end result.
The only reason the writer here is at risk of boring anyone so early in the article is this vague navigating around petty rivalries.
Why not a simple declarative sentence? "In addition to originating the research program in metamathetics, Godel made seminal contributions to x, y, and z; primary contributions to u, v, and w; and touched on almost everything in between." God forbid, that would never pass academic review. People might disagree on the boundary between w and x. International bun fights might result.
Wikipedia navigates around this in an interesting way. It's permissible to cite authoritative voices making concrete lists (i.e. not excessively under the thumb of onerous vetting) on a one-shot basis. Entire paragraphs are pastiched with concrete facts supplied by a different authority in every phrase or sentence. Reminds me of resampling statistics. For all its faults, it's less dry than one voice trying to please everyone until long after most readers have ceased reading.
I'm all for less veneration of sausage and more realism about sausage factories.
Another feature of Wikipedia that I like is that the citations are biased toward accessibility. Not having free electronic access to a state-of-the-art research library, it matters when it comes to verifying a fact whether I have convenient access to the source in question. Sometimes on Wikipedia I trust the lofty sources behind the mighty paywalls less than the merely competent source that's freely accessible. Which of those citations was more thoroughly reviewed by the unwashed freetards? Many fields could be quoting Shockley on eugenics and I wouldn't (initially) know the difference. Nor am I going to pop $35 every time I harbour a dark suspicion, so paywall authorities are largely useless.
OTOH, when it comes time to achieve a firm foundation for rigorous hair-splitting, I'm sure SEP shines supernova bright compared to communal candle wax. For the most part, one needs profound expertise in a field to fully appreciate rigorous hair-splitting. First you have to know exactly how the hair was mounted in the diamond anvil. That's one percent of us, one percent of the time.
Re:Sokal affair (Score:3, Insightful)
It proved only that if a physicist lies to non-physicists about physics, he can fool them. Yeah, they shouldn't have printed the article since they had no way of vetting it. But, still, it would have sank into oblivion if Sokal himself hadn't raised it from the dead: there's not a single citation to it until Sokal contacted the media with the news about his stunt.
All that post-structuralist stuff *is* crap, of course. But Sokal didn't do anything to demonstrate that.
Re:Academics (Score:3, Insightful)
No.
If I say Frankenstein (to use a literary example) is about the conflict of man versus science, and you say it is about family relations, we both may or may not be correct. If you say it is about a giant, glowing, purple duck, then you are 100% wrong. No "dissent doubleplusungood crimething" involved. For everything there is a limited amount of correct avenues of interpretation, and an infinite area outside of it that is just plain wrong.
If I say Sartre's Being and Nothingness is about smurfs, I am wrong, and deserve all the ridicule I get.
I don't understand the birth of this new flavor of relativism and anti-elitism. How the hell did EVERY lunatic opinion become worthy of debate, especially if it comes from someone completely uninformed, since, obviously, people who have devoted their lives to a field MUST be wrong. Damn elitists! They should realize that your average NASCAR and Fox news watching high school graduate is far more capable of grasping academic aspects of reality than someone who spent time mastering it.
I do understand, actually. All the idiots want to be right, since their golden little opinions must be right, or else they wouldn't have faith^W^Wbelieve in them.
Re:tags are correct (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps it's related to the fact that I'm not in a top10 university
You're probably right :p (even though the top10 appellation is a matter of context).
Speaking from experience, here are the 3 extremes: If you want great teachers at the undergrad level, go to a good (but not top) liberal arts school with no research program. If you want excellent peers who can challenge you and who you can learn from, go to a big research/liberal arts school (doesn't matter which one, they both attract the kind of people you might find intellectually stimulating). If you want research experience, go to a big research school.
In reality, you'll want to balance these three aspects (according to your own needs - level of independence, motivation, interests) to pick the "top10" school for you.
Also, regarding parent's main point - no, I have not found "95%" of teachers (imo you quotified the wrong thing :p) in physics and math like that. Did my undergrad in physics at a relatively obscure midwestern liberal arts school - excellent teachers, in every sense of the word. Piss-poor peers (hey, it rhymes!). Doing my PhD at a huge-ass top-tier school on the west coast. Again, excellent teachers. I have found time and again that teachers in lower level courses frequently get rated much higher than those in upper level courses when the student body is mediocre and vice-versa when the student body is what an average person would call "overachieving" (whatever that means *eyeroll*). Parent appears to have been singularly unlucky (or non-objective - I don't really know him/her) to have found such a high percentage of mediocre teachers.
Re:tags are correct (Score:4, Insightful)
Woolloomooloo? (Score:3, Insightful)