User talk:Bhadani/Better than the Best

The 'sad predicament' referenced by the unnamed wikipedian seems to be the torrent of vandalism that the site is (and forever will be) subjected to, until and unless the day arrives when only 'trusted' contributors will be able to make edits. Your own concern that 'consensus does not equal truth' seems to be more of a philosophical contention than a practical basis for the administration of Wikipedia. I look forward to seeing the direction in which you take this article in the days and weeks ahead. 69.37.184.190 17:19, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I am trying to say something - and I woul request you to please give me suggestions. I also suggest you to please register and have a user name for easy exchange of messages and views. Regards. --Bhadani 10:58, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

"We are creating the sum total of human knowledge, and not the sum total of human knowledge based on consensus. No degree of consensus shall change the truth, as the truth does not depend on the consensus." What exactly do you mean here? Who decides what the "truth" is? One person's truth can be another person's lie. It would be good if you can exapnd on this. I guess this speaks to you other point of disinformation. There area few topics that have a degree of contraversy that sufer terribly from edit wars or POV disguised as article. I'm of the opinion that where there is such dichotomy there should be instead a bipartisan presentation of both POVs with an independant critique. There's many articles I've seen that should be merged with such a proceedure. Keep on writing... --Monotonehell 09:01, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

"My considered opinion"
Whose opinion? Who exactly is writing this essay? One man cannot write for us all and speak in the first person. We need to make sure this essay speaks for the project. - Ta bu shi da yu 11:23, 27 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I do agree with you. --Bhadani 15:37, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Please see this one too: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Ta_bu_shi_da_yu&diff=60674301&oldid=60510046 --Bhadani 15:57, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Clarification
I could be wrong about one or more of these points, but perhaps the following would help clarify:
 * 1) The person writing this essay is Bhadani. He cares deeply about the success of WP and is dedicated to improving it. I believe this essay reflects his thoughts on an important topic.


 * 2) I think he is not refering to vandalism, but to unsourced and inaccurate articles which damage our credibility with the public. I have frequently said that "information is only as useful as it is accurate and complete." For an encyclopedia the need for accuracy must be a high priority; if WP is to be taken seriously we need to hold ourselves up to the highest possible standards of verified content.


 * 3) Truth is not a function of concensus - While much of our content is subject to POV disputes, the fact is that some things are just, um...facts. This might seem like a silly example, but it's actually based on a local story which may or may not be true:
 * Many people are frustrated because in Math, the value of Pi is an irrational number; 3.1415927 etc, etc, etc. Articles on Math subjects would be much easier to write and understand if we could just express the value as Pi = 3. After all, everyone prefers round numbers and the benefits are obvious. So on a hypothetical day when all the mathematicians have slept late, one editor introduces a proposal to make the value of Pi = 3 and quickly garners enough support to pass the resolution. By the time the mathematicians wake up and have some coffee, it's all over. So here's the obvious point: Even a 100% consesus in favor of the proposal does not actually change the value of Pi. Any attempt to re-write Math articles using a value of "3" will result in disaster. Yes, I know this is a silly example, but I think it does illustrate the point.


 * 4) Someone who feels that..."We need to make sure this essay speaks for the project" would almost certainly be welcome to add constructive input on this page, as would anyone who cares about improving our WP.

These are just my initial thoughts; Bhadani or anyone else is free to criticize or critique me as they wish :) --Doc Tropics 21:10, 25 June 2006 (UTC) However, this really doesn't mean we can ignore opinions of the masses in articles--they should certainly be noted as facts.  We can't just say "Racism is a mindset arising from ignorance", and then leave the Racist viewpoint unmentioned.  So, looks like we have another "fine line" to add to the books.  AdamBiswanger1 18:05, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Maybe this is just my affinity for logic talking, but the way that I like to describe this point, that consensus does not equal truth, is that through intense debate on both sides, the truth will inevitably be found. There are a few criterion needed by both sides, in my opinion.  They are:
 * 1) An active and thoughtful discussion by both parties
 * 2) Acknowledgement of such things as Truth, contradiction, falsehood
 * 3) Debators must address all points made by the other party and either soundly deny them, admit them, or show it to be irrelevant or not harmful to his or her case.


 * All very true; especially that we can achieve consensus through rigorous debate. Which brings up a major concern: A rigorous debate probably takes place between several editors over a period of days. At the same time, WP is being flooded with a huge number of new articles every day. We are looking for a way to shorten the half-life of the Credibility Gap, but it seems like we will only get further behind. It almost seems that there is a need for a group, either formal or informal, to make a dedicated effort towards credibility through a combination of verifying/improving (in order to preserve useful information), and aggresively deleting articles that are hopelessly inaccurate or useless. Further thoughts? --Doc Tropics 19:12, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Referencing is probably the most difficult possible task on Wikipedia. It's a pain in the ass.  It sucks.  And, unfortunetly, I can't see any realistic efforts to reference anything close to the 1,200,000 pages we have.  I love the idea of a referencing task force, but who would join it?  All I can say is that we should continue to stress referencing, but we all we can do is be thankful for the few well-sourced articles we get.  AdamBiswanger1 19:28, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Being a student of science, I am in paticuarly strong support of point three. I also feel that potentially good topics being lost or destroyed because of community consensus is one of the tragedies of the format we have now. The potential for large numbers of editors to over-rule one knowedgable expert because they either don't like the changes being made or that is not what they were taught in school is too large, but unfortunately a function of the wiki style of editing. I know that out there, there are thousands of anonymous people who can make fantastic contributions to the project, but the risk of them getting buried under a torrent of misinformation is just so great. Viridae Talk 00:03, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Moving from I to We
I would request all interested editors to update the Project page to reflect the position of "WE" instead of "I". Thank you. --Bhadani 15:36, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I just made a minor change on Project Page per your request B. Feel free to revert or re-write if that wasn't what you wanted. Doc Tropics 16:10, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
 * That wise nice. Thank you. --Bhadani 17:12, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Constructive Input
As this essay attempts to address a topic of concern to the community it will benefit from input by more members of the community. The best way to help is by offering constructive input. That dosn't mean you need to agree with everything here, it just means that a detailed comment is more useful than simply saying "This is wrong." If you have questions, comments, or complaints about the essay please be as specific as possible; list the details that concern you and, if possible, add suggestions about how you think they should be addressed. By working together in this fashion we can improve our essay, our articles, and our beloved WP. Thanks for helping :) --Doc Tropics 16:35, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I've massaged the project page a bit as well, feel free to correct, revise or revert anything I have written. Thanks to all participants in this project!! Pedant 17:41, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Looks good, thanks for the cleanup :) --Doc Tropics Message in a bottle 17:43, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately
Unfortunately I think this discussion is a bit beyond our means, as it is one of the key topics to be discussed at Wikimania. Among the proposals are "Blessed articles" that have been perfected, and cannot be edited, and experts who monitor certain areas of human knowledge. So, it's certainly a great thing to brainstorm, but as we speak the same discussions are going on at a much higher level. AdamBiswanger1 03:43, 2 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The matter is engaging the attention, and this is really significant:
 * Wikipedia Signpost/2006-08-21/In the news
 * Wikipedia strives to improve credibility --Bhadani 15:08, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

"better" implies a metric. so does "truth".
I would much prefer the more prosaic "better than last week". If we maintain monotonous increase of quality, we are certain to overtake "the best" at some point, whoever this may be according to your standards. Wikipedia is the only encyclopedia with an arguable claim of being permanently "better than last week". I don't think there can be any serious talk of "Better than the Best" for another 6 or 16 years :\ "emerging as the most vibrant virtual community of volunteers to build the sum total of human knowledge" is both a very specific superlative and a mixed blessing. Regarding "the truth": it is very much a function of consensus. It is very important to understand this. It is not a function of consensus on wikipedia. The consensus is taking place in "real" society worldwide. The task of our community here is not building any sort of consensus on "truth" of course, but to build consensus on how to best accurately report such consensus as it exists in society, based on expert (that is, academic) accounts of the respective topics. Thus, our metric for "best" should derive from such standards, that is, free academic consensus on what an encyclopedia is supposed to be like, just as our metric for "true" should derive exclusively from peer-reviewed free academic consensus. This isn't an ideal universe, but it is the best of imperfect solutions, the only thing that keeps us from becoming another dunghill of unchecked information and fantastic claims (and we all know that online kookery knows no limit) dab (&#5839;) 11:27, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes... but Wikipedia is not a truth dealer.
I think that the underlying thrust of this essay is wishful rather than realistic. Truth isn't something to be read from the cosmos and then imparted upon those who browse the Internet. The truth is something that can only be sought after, and methods such as consensus, which may obscure the rarer gems, do a decent job of revealing likely truths and getting rid of ridiculously unlikely claims.

That stated, I definitely agree that something probably ought to be done to improve the quality of the Wikipedians whose job it is to ferret out and present the truth. After all, a great deal is already done to try to improve the articles themselves by implementing policies which sift out the dross, but nothing is done to sift through the Wikipedians! I don't think Wikipedia will ever surpass conventional encyclopedias - Wikipedians aren't paid experts, after all - but I agree that Wikipedia could definitely be improved by implementing restrictions on who can and cannot edit articles. Harkenbane (talk) 03:27, 21 March 2008 (UTC)