They will also often reject primary sources that contradict secondary narratives - even if the primary source upends the narratives.
6 Likes
Admittedly a thin argument here, but this could potentially be leveraged as a defense in the Melania lawsuit. If no one believes them to be credible, there may not be damage to her reputation.
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/an-open-letter-to-wikipedia
Unfortunately, most of us can’t use the New Yorker as a place to publish “original research”
11 Likes
Wikipedia’s “Things That Cause and Cure Cancer” article is really going to take a hit from this decision.
I don’t know of any reputable post-secondary institution that would as a standard consider Wikipedia citations in research papers to be suitable. Wikipedia is a good starting point and is usually citation enough for a BBS forum comment, but is not really considered authoritative enough to support more substantial work.
10 Likes
There was another case I remember reading about, where a historian of 19th century American radicalism was working on the Haymarket massacre and had come across documents that indicated that the people convicted for the bombing might have indeed been guilty and Wikipedia refused to include this, since it was in primary sources and hadn’t been written in the form of a book yet. I guess the argument is that a book means that the work has been vetted and reviewed by other professionals and has some sort of agreement among historians. But still… Especially stuff like this with Roth makes no sense not to correct it.
5 Likes
I understand where wikipedia is coming from as an organization here. Anyone can edit it. That means that whatever is contained in the article really has to speak for itself, you can’t reference a person as an authority. You can’t just take a letter from Roth saying it’s not true. How could the wikipedia article have indicated what Roth’s opinion on the matter was?
By getting his open letter published in the New Yorker, Roth did exactly what wikipedia needed in order for the issue to be addressed. The wikipedia entry can (and does) link to that article so that anyone reading it can know what Roth himself said.
I just don’t think wikipedia has any mechanism for giving authors the last word about their own creations unless that last word can be referenced somewhere other than through wikipedia itself. If you don’t like what wikipedia says about your book, don’t tell wikipedia, tell an interviewer who will publish the interview in a magazine, then go edit the wikipedia page yourself.
4 Likes
I occasionally read news articles on dailymail and have not found them worse t major US newspapers. Maybe dm is unreliable but that does not make them different from US newspapers.han major
1 Like
Daily Mail? Unreliable?
7 Likes
When I was an undergrad, the university’s policy was that NO journalist-based sources were reliable or suited for citation. The couple of times I used them to merely point out a minor detail – I got docked and given a written lecture. Considering I could use 200-600 sources in a single paper, it was irksome that it always somehow, stood out to the profs.
They had a good point with that policy, but then when I began to teach, I had a strict no-Wikipedia for source rule because it was unreliable and not suited for citation, either.
So one unreliable source is smacking down another unreliable source; it amuses…
6 Likes
This is a fine thread to read on the subject. A prime example of the weasling from the ‘horses mouth’ along with fine dismantling of the same.
2 Likes
The notorious, Hitler-endorsing, Brexit-backing, anti-vaxx, cancer-scare-promoting, compulsively lying, photoshop failing, plagiarizing, M15-creating, hateful, lethally transphobic, Creative Commons misunderstanding, evil, teacher-demonizing, royal-wedding-lying, Melania Trump distressing, racist, grandstanding, pig-fuckery-promoting tabloid
I like this description, reminds me of that Pepsi tongue twister ad from back then; Lipsmackin’ thirstquenchin’ acetastin’ motivatin’ goodbuzzin’ cooltalkin’ highwalkin’ fastlivin’ evergivin’ coolfizzin’ Pepsi
The brief definition of the Daily Mail in my personal vocab is “hatefilled shit-rag”. What a sack of poison.
3 Likes
I am one of the Wikipedia editors who participated in the decision regarding the Daily Mail. You can see my contributions to that discussion by going to [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Daily_Mail_RfC ] and searching on my name. If it isn’t there when you read this, search for “Daily Mail RfC” in the archives for that page.
We did not make this decision lightly, but The Daily Mail had simply fabricated too many stories for us to trust them. I posted several specific examples at the above URL.
Despite claims to the contrary by the Daily Mail, this had nothing to do with the political positions of the Daily Mail and everything to do with them knowingly printing things that they knew to be false. Again, look at the discussion I referenced above for multiple examples.
I would also like to make it clear that our decision will not prevent anyone from using The Daily Mail as a citation on Wikipedia. It will simply give anyone trying to cite the Daily Mail a warning, but they can ignore the warning and use it anyway. If it is one of the exceptions, such as use in our article on the Daily Mail, that will be the end of it. If it isn’t one of the exceptions (which is most of Wikipedia) it will be logged and someone will come along shortly and remove the citation, replacing it with another, more reliable source if we can find one.
I will be happy to answer any questions that anyone has, ether here or on my Wikipedia talk page at [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Guy_Macon ].
11 Likes
Re: AlexandraKitty’s comment “So one unreliable source is smacking down another unreliable source; it amuses…”:
Wikipedia itself tells you not to use Wikipedia as a source. See [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia ]. The reason is simple; no anonymous-user generated material can be used as a source, because anyone can say anything and claim to be anyone. We allow anyone to edit Wikipedia without even the email verification that this comments section requires, so of course you cannot trust anything on Wikipedia.
Also see [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia ].
8 Likes
Try telling my students that!
4 Likes
The problem is that the Daily Fail is so uneven. One day they can have a well-researched article, and the next, utter hog-slop about the same topic. Anything involving a celebrity drops the reliability to lucky. (Lucky if they get anything right.)
This will filter out all the nonsense articles. For the well-researched ones, editors can argue about it on the talk pages.
Category:Daily Mail I’ve collected over 200.
No doubt the Scientology editors will now go on a destroy mission to remove the good and the bad.
2 Likes
I presume that you also don’t allow citing dead-tree encyclopedias.
1 Like
I don’t think students know what those are anymore…I always encouraged primary sources.
3 Likes
Fun with citations: we used to put a couple of deliberate joke papers into our recommended reading lists, to check for students citing things without reading them.
Every semester, we had at least one student try to use this as a serious citation:
11 Likes
That is extremely clever! Love it!
2 Likes
