User talk:Shamira Gelbman

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Great Depression in South Africa

I found your addition to the Great Depression/Addendum subpage admirably clear and very interesting. If you could find time to develop it into a separate article, I guess that would be generally welcome. Nick Gardner 07:10, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! I'll see what I can do once I've gotten my bearings around here a bit more - I'm still very new to Citizendium (and relatively new to wiki collaboration) Shamira Gelbman 01:18, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

In the meantime, may I suggest that you insert references to the sources of the information that you have added (this has not always been the practice for previous contributions to this topic, but I am trying to bring them into line with the proposed guidelines on the matter - that have been generally adopted for economics articles). Nick Gardner 11:52, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do...it was all pretty much off the top of my head. In the meantime, can you link me to the proposed guidelines you mentioned? I was trying to get a better sense of the expectations for citations here the other day and was having a hard time finding information.

New Deal (American English and British English)

Thank you for your contributions to the article on the New Deal -I'm sure you know more about it than I do.

However, you have made a minor mistake in correcting the spelling. Being new to Citizendium you are probably unaware of the convention that the originating author chooses whether the atticle is to be in American English or British English, and the choice is duly recorded on the talk page. If you look you will see that indicated as "BE" for the New deal article, meaning that it is wrritten in British English. So, for example, the spelling "program" is incorrect - it should be programme.

This doesn't bother me in the least, but there are pedants around who might object to your spelling changes. I leave it to you to undo your spelling changes if you feel like it.

Nick Gardner 06:51, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Afterthought: - You may prefer to change the spelling to American English throughout. I am sure nobody will mind. But the pedants will want consistency. Nick Gardner 08:14, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I was actually a bit confused about that when I started editing the article -- there were already some inconsistencies and when I checked there didn't seem to be a language variant selected (it still looks that way, but that could just be me not knowing what I'm doing). Shamira Gelbman 17:22, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

You are quite right and I was wrong. I have now selected the BE variant because that's the way most of it is now drafted (although the original, before I rewrote it was in American English). Please do as you think fit and change to American if you think that's more appropriate, Nick Gardner 23:07, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

A sources guideline ?

I should have said that the guidelines that I had in mind are yet to be spelled out, let alone adopted. I have for some time intended to propose the formal adoption of some guidelines, and I have been discussing the matter with other authors. The principle is, to my mind, clear, but it turns out to be surprisingly difficult to express in detail. Here is something that I have considered putting on a Citizendium forum in order to start the ball rolling. I should be glad of your opinion on whether I should put it forward as it stands (it does ramble a bit).

I suggest that it should be considered unacceptable for a Citizendium article to include an unsupported statement of opinion. Such statements can be acceptable if made under the byline of a recognised authority or under the editorial control of such an authority. But , while it may be appropriate to include such statements in many of the published encyclopedias, their inclusion in a Citizendium article should be considered unacceptable - even in an approved article. The reason is that it would be irrational for a reader to assume that an unsupported statement by an unknown person contains any useful information.

For a guideline to that effect to be effective, however, it would have to include explanations of what is meant by an "unsupported statement of opinion" and of what categories of support are necessary to make such statements admissable . That is to some extent a matter of judgement.. There can be no reasonable objection to the unqualified inclusion of widely-accepted statements. But how can we define "widely-accepted? It is obvious that a statement that the earth is a globe need not refer to possible dissent by the flat earth society, but not so obvious that references to natural selection should not acknowledge the possibility of dissent -- (perhaps by the addition of a qualifying statement such as "according to Charles Darwin"). No hard-and-fast rule seems possible.

And then there is a question of what qualification would be acceptable. "Some people believe" is meaningless. "Most people believe" at least acknowledges by implication that others don't, but is itself an unsupported statement. If the statement is about economics then "according to Nobel Prize-winner Paul Krugman" contains some information (even to those who do not agree with him) , but "according to the economics correspondent of the New York Times" would mean nothing to most readers. A reference to a document presenting a well-argued deduction, or logical inference from well-established evidence would obviously do, but a collection of anecdotes would not....and so on. Complicated isn't it? But in practice, precision may not be essential because the issues are often so clear-cut that the finer distinctions do not arise.

Do you agree that we need a guideline? If so, do you think we should try to be precise, or should we rely upon examples?,

I think there should be a guideline (that's always useful for collaborative projects), that precision (as much as possible) would be nice, and that there should be examples included but we shouldn't rely on them alone to make the case. That said, I also think the issue of citation is more thorny than your proposal lets on. Particularly when it comes to "statements of fact" (as opposed to the "statements of opinion" you focus on here), it gets right at the heart of the ongoing debate over how "experts" and "non-experts" should interact in the development of wiki encyclopedia entries. It's an issue that's been bugging me for a while, so I'm interested to see how the discussion will play out if you go ahead and get that forum started Shamira Gelbman 17:05, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I take your point. If you look at the talk page of the article on Crash of 2008 you will see that the expert/non-expert issue came up in the disagreement that I had with Larry Sanger last year - although I have always maintained that the real issue was the need to avoid making statements that are unsupported by evidence, and not my expertise. My editor, Martin Baldwin-Edwards resigned over that issue - which he took to be over professional standards of conduct, rather than expertise as such.

I am somewhat daunted by the prospect of a time-consuming forum debate on these matters, so I am putting it off until I have done what I can on the Great Depression group of articles. Nick Gardner 09:01, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

This can be a frustrating situation, especially when an expert here wants to speak from personal experience, or of general acceptance in a field, but that the information simply doesn't exist in a form that lends itself to citation. A number of the citation assumptions may work for the more traditional academic disciplines, but not less traditional, or even practical application of academic fields.

In network engineering (Computers and Engineering Workgroups; I'm an Editor in both), there indeed are some peer-reviewed documents, although the main peer review process differs from traditional journals, but a tremendous amount of knowledge comes from very active mailing lists. Such lists often teach by establishing consensus; there's no one specific message I could cite as the best current practice in, for example, how to protect an Internet Service Provider from attack. Ironically, when I created a Signed Article subpage of a humorous teaching example that I have used in many public fora, and has been floating around the Internet for quite a time (while technical, it did make Best of USENET Humor), I was directed to take it to a talk page. Another Computers Editor conceivably could have put it back as a signed article, but there is a distinct shortage of active editors.

Military is even worse. First, as far as I know, I'm the only active editor. There is a place where I talk about a technical aspect of security during the Vietnam War. There's a related citation. I remember exactly where it was documented, classified in 1967 but automatically declassified in three years, so I can talk about it. It was in the Military Assistance Command Vietnam Lessons Learned series. As far as I can tell, no one seems to know if they are archived anywhere; ironically, a colleague at an intelligence agency tried to find it and failed, but also knew people who had read the document.

Perhaps most frustrating is when I, as an Editor experienced in a subject, say that a term or approach simply is wrong, and a non-expert argues for me to explain my position. That has, on occasion, become the problem of proving a negative — I can't cite an example of why they are wrong, because errors tend not to be documented. There have been times when I've made a formal ruling with the intention of stopping an erroneous argument (e.g., the date that North Vietnam actually committed to the military takeover of South Vietnam, which I based on primary documents). The author continued to argue, I got a bit annoyed, and a Constable deleted the entire exchange with a "freshstart" over behavior, rather than simply saying "an Editor has ruled. You may take try to get dispute resolution (although there are no other active Editors), but the argument has to stop." It's even worse when I am not a formal Editor in the specific question, but I have direct knowledge that the assertions are flatly wrong, perhaps eclectic specialized experience that doesn't meet Editor criteria. Howard C. Berkowitz 02:11, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

"This can be a frustrating situation, especially when an expert here wants to speak from personal experience, or of general acceptance in a field, but that the information simply doesn't exist in a form that lends itself to citation." -- That's exactly what I had in mind, and a big part of why I was quickly frustrated with Wikipedia. I guess there isn't (yet) a solution to the problem here either. Shamira Gelbman 00:10, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Can either of you suggest a modification of my proposal suitable for launcing on a forum - perhaps a list of exceptions? Nick Gardner 08:37, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

With some trepidation, as I'm really not starting to reopen a fight, I'd like to offer a personal example of what I considered a good-faith, even somewhat sourced example that was ruled out of order by the E-I-C: Talk: Internet Protocol Suite. The anecdotes about the "Seven Deadly Layers" were, indeed, things I prevented: orally at a professional conference, but also that have been quoted, with credit, in various Internet forums. In good faith, I put it up as a signed article, but told it was "approving my own work"; essentially, Editor approval was needed. He suggested I find a Computers Workgroup Editor to approve putting it back. Frankly, since I'm the only substantially active Computers editor; there is another that occasionally works on articles and one that stays in contact although is on "wikibreak", I'm not going to squander that limited resource when I have substantive articles awaiting Approval.

Admittedly, I was new when I first put it up. Several considerations made me think it was fair. Not the least of which was that it is anecdotal, and adds humor to a subject that is rather abstract; I and others use it as a teaching tool. It does appear in "Best of USENET Humor" archives; I didn't put it there, and variants show up in search.

In the relevant discipline, I am a formal Editor. I happen to use a good deal of humor in my professional books. My peer reviewers all were amused; there are some reviewers on Amazon that did't like the style of using them, but the existence of even those negative reviews is evidence of my writing in such a manner.

So, whether or not it's a proposal, I tend to believe that at least an Editor, with credentials checking, should be able to put up a Signed Article or other designated subpages, clearly identifying it as a relevant personal contribution from direct experience. This should done with discretion; I am not enthiusiastic for making people Editors on their first day, until they have demonstrated the ability to work with the community, and to be edited. In like manner, if an Author member has been active and respected, and chooses to put up an anecdotal subpage with relevance, I'd tend to lean toward that; workgroup or Editor disapproval would be more the approach.

While I did it with a funny teaching example, I see no good reason, especially in fields where there be few mechanisms for peer-reviewed publication of certain experience, that clearly identified personal contributions, obviously relevant to the subject, and considering the contributor's reputation (here and elsewhere) should need a process comparable to Article approval. Now, if we had an abundant supply of active Editors, I might say Editor signoff might be appropriate — I'd entertain user nomination, again with some tenure to avoid sockpuppets. The reality is, however, that we now have a choice: use the material with case-by-case judgment and being open to substantive objections (i.e., not "it's not our policy"), or not use the material until we have enough Editors. Military, Sports, Food, and even Health Sciences are also areas were there are techniques and anecdotes well known in the discipline, but unlikely to have appeared in a peer-reviewed publication.

I don't want to get into a flamewar about the role of editors and what do when there are no editors; I will simply note that there is a situation where an individual put up a number of orphaned articles, which many believe give at least the impression of a political agenda, and was reluctant to take guidance; I made Editor recommendations for deletion that were not accepted by the Constabulary. At this point, with much muttering, I'm writing essentially new articles on the subject, perhaps replacing in place, perhaps being allowed to do a merge/move/delete to a more authoritative presentation. My own feeling is that I'd rather see no article than an inaccurate or agenda-driven one; in these cases, they deal with current events but haven't been updated, in some cases, in over a year — where the substance is largely overtaken by events. How do you feel about such an approach? I wouldn't be as bad as writing an article about verkrampte National Party matters and not indicating these are long past, but it would be much closer to having an article on AIDS denialism suggesting there have been no South African policy changes. Howard C. Berkowitz 15:41, 27 February 2009 (UTC)