Most professors I know don’t accept cites to Wikipedia and other suspect Internet sites, which are common here. Which I think was his point, but I can’t be sure.
Why?
Barring specific evidence (such as Oakminster had already encountered), I think that we would generally be better off cutting newbies some slack than assuming that they are evil. The stupid and evil ones will show themselves soon enough; no need to get upset at those who are merely a bit gauche or lacking sufficient clues.
As to banning, What Exit?: Do you have evidence that Ross Grumet is not the O_VAUGHAN of the other board? Perhaps he is simply spreading his odd views of the world around where he happens to alight?
(Mind you, we will probably be looking at him (and the thin ice on which he stands) rather closely, but his posts to date have not attempted to spam the board, sell junk, start fights, or otherwise cause serious trouble, so what is the hurry?)
The alternative is what, Ross? “I am an expert but I can’t prove it, and the answer to the question is YES, but I can’t explain why because my reference book is under copyright and I can’t post a sample from it.”
You are correct that simply posting a cite is an argument from authority — “this reference said so, therefore I’m right and you’re wrong” — but at some point, all factual questions boil down to this, right?
O_Vaughn claims the version he posted is a book exerpt (3rd post down in linked thread), so even if our new troll is him, he’s still a cut&paste puke at best. Since he didn’t bother with quotation marks, it reads to me like he’s trying to pass it off as his own work. When he gets banned, I’ll try to get cross-interweb credit to improve my ranking in the Mod Troll Slayer standings in another forum…
Though common, most people here don’t except a blog-style wiki article as accurate, either. But even Wikipedia articles contain cites, themselves.
Linking to wikipedia is the same and just as good as linking to a previous thread which contains accurate information with cites to back it up. I think that is the point the OP is missing.
Sure, anyone with a GED can use Google and pretend he knows the answer. But there’s nothing wrong with a layman citing an article from a peer reviewed medical journal that backs up a statement.
Many of us know something about research methods and those apply to every field. I am only a hobbyist reader about quantum physics but I know automatically that a cite from a second-rate letters journal probably won’t have much impact on the field while an article in Science or Nature is a pretty big deal even if it still isn’t conclusive. Journals and other reference works are structured in a pretty predictable hierarchy across all fields so a good cite puller can know the value of the citation without even knowing much about the field itself. This occurs in non-academic references as well. A cite from the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times is known to carry the weight of a lot of people’s reputations behind it while the New York Post or the Podunk Ledger not so much.
I think that a lot of us here have those skills. Taking the OP’s complaint to heart would mean that we couldn’t ever trust any single piece of printed material even though the structure of the whole system and a little bit of common sense means that is not the case. I agree that a single Wikipedia article doesn’t prove much especially if it is contrary to accepted beliefs in the field. However, it will probably do just fine telling what the name of Bill Clinton’s dog was.
Oh good Gods!
“You’re all finding information to back up your claims and that’s, like, lame. Hahah, sites.”
You won’t like it here Ross. You evidently don’t like it here, and one of your first OP’s is all about how much you don’t like the community and our shared values. There are many communities online that are dedicated to the type of discussion you seem to prefer. May I suggest several cartoon message boards?
You can always go away.
I stand corrected and I am happy to hear that you will be keeping an eye on this [del]troll[/del], I mean guest poster.
Ross, could you clue us in, are you O_VAUGHAN of the other board or did you lift his post, because it seemed so clever to you?
Jim
The vast majority of Wikipedia articles aren’t sourced, yet people link to them anyway. Many articles even with a references section contain information that isn’t found in the sources, is a bad interpretation of the source, or just flat-out contradicts the source. Wikipedia has credibility that it does not deserve.
If you feel the urge to link to Wikipedia as a cite, consider this:
-
Does the information in the article have a source? If so, it should be listed and you can link directly to it, rather than the Wikipedia article itself.
-
Does the article have no sources? Then it’s no more reliable than something you read on Usenet.
Go to Wikipedia and click “Random Article” on the sidebar twenty times. See how many times you get an articles that have good sources.
I’ll buy you a vacation in Porchesia if you get more than five. You’ll likely get none at all.
:eek:
Oh, shit, I won’t sleep a wink with that racing through my mind! Damn you, Freddy the Pig! Damn you to Joisey!!
Oh, heavens. If the dour (if oddly gleeeful) and solidly earthy damnation of Chick ever mixed with the æthereal lollipops and sugar candy of the Rosicrucians, we’d get a mildly dull, gray November day, (May in the Antipodes), not the anti-matter annihilation of the universe.
Posting a cite isn’t always–or even most of the time–an argument from authority. Posting a citation offers others a way to trace the logic and evidence that led to a given conclusion. It lets other people evaluate the basis for the claims you’re making or arguing against.
:mad:
That’s easy for you to say.
Oh for fucks sake.
I’m going to admit that my knee-jerk reaction is that RG is a troll but you’re all missing the actual point he made.
He’s not complaining about people citing their sources in general. I think he’s complaining about people who know fuck all about something or other just randomly googling for it and cut-and-pasting a bit of the first hit along with a link.
And it is quite common on here (I’ve done it from time to time) and is some threads it’s appropriate and there are decent Google-able sites/cites. In some threads the Google-and-paste approach is worse than useless and causes more harm than good. Some people are worse for it than others, I imagine they know who they are.
For what it’s worth a lot of you could do with not going “oh noes, someone slagged off teh board must take the piss out of them before considering their point”. Even a blind troll finds the occasionally tasty goat to eat.
SD
/mixed metaphors since 1975.
It’s the ones who demand cites for things that should be common knowledge to anyone who feels competent enough to express an opinion on a subject that gets me.
Weird. Everyone else got their feathers in a ruffle over this OP, but I found it to be largely correct.
I think that the common insistence upon outside evidence is one of the best things about this board, but sometimes the standards for this evidence is a little low. Often merely having a second individual parroting your same claim is given more weight than it should and simply providing the citation is enough to fill in for critical analysis of the actual issue or the citations provided.
I can’t find it now, but I recall a thread a while back relating to “hypersensitive personality disorder” or some bit where a few people got their rocks off on claiming to be “hypersensitive” and needing validation for their status as special and delicate snowflakes by including it as a pathology in the DSM-V or something. Other people were skeptical, asked for evidence that they were particularly far out of the distribution for sensitivity to things, or for evidence that this hypersensitivity was in some way maladaptive to their lives and requiring a work up for treatment from a mental health professional. It was odd, because half the time they were just bragging about their ability to perceive things that others couldn’t and the “maladaptive” component pretty much amounted to annoyance from sweater tags.
Anyway, anecdotes and what not flowed freely until the skeptics started screaming, “cite!” and someone managed to provide a “research article” published in one of the barely peer-reviewed bullshit psychology dinosaur journals that unfortunately still cling to life that pretty much provided the same level of validity. It was published by the wife of a husband and wife “research team” that was dedicated to bringing issues of hypersensitivity to the fore of American psychological and psychiatric discourse. The article was completely lacking in empirical evidence, didn’t cite empirical evidence, and it didn’t even involve clinical experience, just the author blabbing on about her own experiences with hypersensitivity and her ability to sense every sweater-tag and hear every dropped book from 200 yards that us normal suckers are without the burden, responsibility, and privilege of perceiving (kind of like the X-Men I guess).
And yet, the fact that it was a “published professional psychology article” trumped everything else.
So in that sense, this endless citing back and forth in arguments without a critical assessment of the content of those citations can sure get annoying.
OK, just for fun, I did that. Here’s what I got:
Detonation, the band, with a link to the band’s official Web site.
David Marty, French rugby player, with an official link to a page with his stats.
Tungsten Handheld, from Palm, with links to multiple reviews and specs.
Iles Braghetto, member of the EU parliament, with a link to his personal Web site.
Puff, Puff, Pass, a “stoner” film, with links to its IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes pages.
Rick White, roc climber, with no links.
Perfidious Albion, a derogatory name for Great Britian, with no links, but a reference to a journal article.
New York Marriott Marquis, a hotel, with links to its official site and that of its architect.
Instant Live: Avalon, Boston, MA 10/17/04, an album from Living Color, with no links.
Fire of Moscow (1812), with no links, but mention of three Russian references.
South Atlantic English, a language variety, with no links.
Logone, Occidental, a disambiguation page, with no links (nor any on either of the pages it points to).
Fuse, as in “explosives”, with a link to a WMD page.
Occupational Health Services Convention, 1985, an ILO convention, with a link to the convention page itself.
Rainbow Family, a semi-hippie organization, with links to their Web site and a study of them.
ESP Navigator, a Japanese guitar, with no links.
Medolago, an Italian municipality, with no links, but a demographic reference.
Tony Reali, ESPN personality, with a link to a Wa Po article.
Tony Slattery, an English actor, with links to his Web site, his IMDB profile, and a Guardian article.
Aslan, a defunct Narnia fanzine, with no links.
By my count, quickly marching through the links and making a determination of quality:
CRAP SOURCING: 10 (Iles Braghetto, Rick White, Instant Live, South Atlantic English, Logone Occidental, Fuse, ESP Navigator, Medolago, Tony Reali, Aslan)
ACCEPTABLE SOURCING, considering the unimportance of the subject: 5 (Detonation, David Marty, Puff Puff Pass, New York Marriott Marquis, Occupational Health Services Convention)
PASSABLE SOURCING: 3 (Rainbow Family, Tony Slattery, Fire of Moscow [because I can’t read Russian])
GOOD SOURCING: 2 (Tungsten Handheld, Perfidious Albion)
I think this is more an indication that Wiki has too much breadth rather than not enough depth, and a random article is likely to be something that’s relatively unknown. (Other than “fuse”, I’ve never heard of any of these things.) A wiki article on, say quantum physics is apt to be better sourced.
Still, your comment stands.
zut has already done it, but here goes:
[ol]Pull the Plug. Three links, all to other Wikipedia articles.
[li] Kintbury railway station. Stub article but good external cites.[/li]
[li] Adria Airways. Lots of links, few outside Wikipedia. Link to the airline’s own website. [/li]
[li] Crack Epidemic. Good external links, reputable references.[/li]
[li] Una Volta. Pop song. Link to band’s website.[/li]
[li] Cherenkov detector. Stub article. Links to other wikipedia articles which have good references.[/li]
[li] NACRO. I’m sure casdave will pass better judgement than me on the page, but it does have a link to the organisation’s website.[/li]
[li] Colin Frangicetto. Pop artist. Stub article. Two external links.[/li][/ol]
At this point I stopped, because so few of the articles need independent sources, and three were stubs.
Wikipedia can be a good start, but you need to follow through.
Interesting post, Zut. I have some observations on what you’ve found.
There is a significant difference between an External Link and a Reference on Wikipedia. Wikipedia policy states:[
](http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_links)Information from the External Links is not meant to be source material for the article. If we go through your list again with this in mind, here’s what we come up with:
Detonation, the band: No references
David Marty: No references
Tungsten Handheld: No references, article is in a category of “Articles with unsourced statements”
Iles Braghetto: No references
Puff, Puff, Pass: No references
Rick White (rock climber): No references
Perfidious Albion: One reference
New York Marriott Marquis: No references
Instant Live: Avalon, Boston, MA 10/17/04: No references
Fire of Moscow (1812): No references
South Atlantic English: No references
Logone Occidental Region: No references on either linked article
Fuse (explosives):No references
Occupational Health Services Convention, 1985: One reference that doesn’t appear to actually support anything in the (short) article.
Rainbow Family: No references
ESP Navigator: No references
Medolago: One reference
Tony Reali: No references
Tony Slattery: No references
Aslan (fanzine):No references
That gives us three references total out of twenty articles.
Take a look at this post I found in the General Questions forum yesterday. This is a classic example of how NOT to use Wikipedia. That article contains no sources at all, yet it’s quoted as a credible article. This is happening far too much lately.
Here is another recent example of someone posting a link to a Wikipedia article that has no sources. As an answer to a question in GQ, no less.