The article on Aristotle's Prior Analytics, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_Analytics, one of the great works of the Western intellectual tradition, is so bad I wrote one from scratch on Wikipedia Review http://www.wikipediareview.com/Prior_Analytics. The Wikipedia version was begun in 2004 and by the magical process of crowd-sourcing has grown from one sentence to a whole paragraph, most of which consists of links to other internet sites, and of course hundreds of different categories plus a 'stub' tag. Similarly the talk page has a 'Philosophy Portal' template with all sorts of useless categorisation about what kind of article it is. It sums Wikipedia up, doesn't it.

The Wikipedia Review version at least tells you what the book is about.

When are Wikipeidans going to understand that crowd-sourcing doesn't work?

I don't think either article is particularly good. At least the Wikipedia ones sticks to the topic, though, and puts the description of syllogisms into the syllogism article. The Wikipedia Review article, on the other hand, puts the philosophical content into the article on the book.

Neither article explains very much about the book itself, like why it is "one of the great works of the Western intellectual tradition".

I guess if you're looking for a miniature Cliff's Notes edition of Prior Analytics written by an anonymous (and not particularly intelligent) philosopher, the Wikipedia Review article is the way to go. In any case, you haven't shown that crowd-sourcing doesn't work, just that it doesn't work in one particular case.

I was following pretty closely the explanation given by Thomas Reid, who was a great writer. I wouldn't say he was 'not particularly intelligent'. He is very good at explaining things clearly.

I agree that more needs to be written about why the work is interesting and important. In Wikipedia, that is explained in the article on the Organon, which I wrote

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&action=history

That should be moved to Wikipedia Review.

I wouldn't either. That part of my comment was purely ad hominem. In any case, are you claiming that you plagiarized the article? If so, please replace "written" with "plagiarized" above. If not, my comment stands. If you're looking for a hack job from some anonymous internet "philosopher", the Wikipedia Review article might be the way to go. If you'd prefer something actually useful, go to the text itself, or possibly "the explanation given by Thomas Reid", or maybe a philosophy textbook, or if you're looking for something free and on the Internet maybe the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, not some half-assed Wikipedia Review article.

It is a summary. Reid's work is longer, and written in a style of English that would not suit a modern audience.

Okay, so the Wikipedia Review article is a summary of a summary of a text written thousands of years ago. Calling it "a miniature Cliff's Notes edition of Prior Analytics written by an anonymous (and not particularly intelligent) philosopher" seems appropriate.

The "anonymous (and not particularly intelligent) philosopher" part of my comment refers to the person who wrote the article, not to the person who wrote the text which the article is summarized from.

Eh?

If you want to slag off on Damian, there are dozens of better reasons than this.

You are an idiot. Thomas Reid was writing in the eighteenth century. He was not writing thousands of years ago, although Aristotle was (perhaps you are getting the two confused).

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is excellent, but beyond the capacity of most Wikipedia readers. There is a need for a concise explanation of the key texts of the Western intellectual tradition, that covers every aspect of the work without going into rambling detail. That was the point. Wikipedia does not give us this, in this particular case. I can think of many others.



Don't worry, he (Anthony) is still angry at me for noticing his particularly unintelligent comments about Russell's theory of descriptions.

Perhaps you can't read. I didn't repeat "a summary of" twice by accident.



Why? There are two separate reasons that Prior Analytics is important. One is its impact on society. For that, there isn't too much need to explain the details of the text, at least not without tying that in to how it impacted the world. Yes, someone studying the history of philosophy would certainly want to have a complete summary of the text, but that clearly isn't the target audience of the Wikipedia or Wikipedia Review article. The other reason Prior Analytics is important is its contribution to our understanding of logic, but for that you are much better off going with a modern text than a summary of an ancient text.

Well, either you don't mention the work at all. Is that what you mean? If you do mention the work, you can't just say 'it is a book by Aristotle'. You have to cover it at an appropriate level of detail, in the amount of space that is appropriate to the subject.



I don't think you are better off with a modern text, actually. Most modern textbooks on 'Traditional logic' take you some way from the true source, i.e. Aristotle. By all means have something on traditional logic as well. But there is a need for something which explains Aristotle's theory of the syllogism, in pretty much the order he wrote it.

And you believe you have done that in the Wikipedia Review article? As I pointed out, you don't even talk in the Wikipedia Review article about why the work is important. I think your focus is completely wrong. I think the Wikipedia article's focus is more on track, but the comprehensiveness is obviously lacking.

How is the Wikipedia article more on track? It contains nothing that is not in the MWB article, except for the statement that it is the first formal study of logic. That is correct, and should be in the MWB article. I will put something in there.

Right, and that's where I'm saying you are wrong.



Are you saying that Aristotle was completely correct, and that we have not learned anything since? If I'm reading about philosophy, I want the author's description of what s/he believes to be true, not a summary of what other people believed to be true. If I'm reading about the history of philosophy, that's a whole different story, of course. But then I'm more interested in the impact of the philosophical beliefs on society than on the particulars of the belief itself.



It doesn't waste the reader's time by going into a bunch of superfluous stuff like the MWB article does. Again, if I want philosophy, I want original texts, not summaries. If I want history of philosophy, I want social context, not summaries.

ugh.

Tar pit with most of this thread?

drat, wrong button

I'm sorry you are quite wrong. To deal with the impact of the work, would require going a level up and talking about the logica vetus - the stuff that was available in the West before the late twelfth century, and the logica nova, the stuff (including the analytics) that was recovered from the Byzantines. You would have to talk about how the logica vetus influenced primarily the tradition of the philosophy of language in the Western tradition, and how the logica nova influenced thought about deductive logic and demonstration.

That would cover up to the medieval period. To talk about the whole of traditional logic would take another few levels up.

For this book, it is enough to cover what the book actually says. When you have a wiki, and linking, and categories, there is no need to do too much in one article.

I do actually cover the influence of Aristotle's logic here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_lo...totle.27s_logic

[edit] And there I do indeed say "His logical works, called the Organon, are the earliest formal study of logic that have come down to modern times. " So nothing is missing.






No, we are covering an important topic, which is why crowdsourcing is so bad. Anthony is actually making some interesting points.

Which is my point, and something which I think the Wikipedia article does much better. Your Wikipedia Review article goes into too much detail about the specifics of the book. It would be as though I tried to explain Einstein's (mis)understanding of relativity in an article called [[On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies]].

Format-wise (I haven't delved into the details of the text), I think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annus_Mirabilis_papers is a good example of the type of format I think such an article should take. It doesn't get into the details of the theory, except where it is necessary to explain the importance of the work in historical context. There's no attempt to teach people special relativity, nor should there be. To learn special relativity, you need a modern textbook, not a summary of a summary of a translation of an original work.

What you are missing is that the Prior Analytics is a portion of a larger work, the Organon. It is at that level that you need sections like 'background' and 'influence' and so on.

You are certainly right that the details of the theory are only necessary to explain the importance of the work. In the case of the Prior Analytics, one would have to explain the importance of the syllogism and its relevance to traditional logic up until the late nineteenth century.

And in any case, the scope of the article is pretty much as Reid gives it. I think his explanation is excellent. That is enough for now.

If you're suggesting that Prior Analytics would be better as a redirect to Organon I'm not going to argue with you. But if you're going to expand the article on Prior Analytics (which you suggest ought to be done), then I believe you ought to expand the historical context as much if not more than the summary of the text itself.



Sure, it contains detail. But it puts it in historical context. Don't you see how it is so very different than your Wikipedia Review article? Now, if you do see that the format is different, are you arguing that the format of your Wikipedia Review article is better?



Great, maybe you can add that to the Wikipedia Review article. Even better, maybe someone else can do so, thereby disproving your point about "crowdsourcing" at the same time.

If you read the article now, I have expanded the historical context as much as is necessary. No more detail is required, that would go into the Organon article.



The format of the MWB is appropriate to the subject, which is not the same as the Einstein article. And as I say again, if the scope of the article is pretty much as Reid (a formidable writer) wanted it, nothing much can be wrong.



I have done so, see above. How does this disprove my point about "crowdsourcing"? My having complete editorial over that article, helped by comments and criticism from people like yourself (while you are somewhat abrupt, you make good points), is the way to develop a good article. This is how it is done professionally. Crowdsourcing, by contrast, is the principle that 'anyone can edit'.

To be absolutely clear, I am not against collaborative work. It is 'crowdsourcing' that is the problem.

You really need to work on your reading skills. I'll let you figure out your reading error on your own this time. (Or maybe it's your logic skills. Those could use some work too.)

I'm glad you've improved your article. Perhaps now it is actually better than the Wikipedia one (which is a pretty easy thing to do).

As for your point about "crowdsourcing", it has neither been proven nor disproven.

If Peter wants to do something useful Im sure hed be welcome on Wikiquote. He must be able to find lots of good sourced quotes by philosophers. There is a whole Category:Philosopher stubs of articles to be expanded. And of course there must be many eminent philosophers with no articles at all there yet.

My point, stated at the the beginning, was that the Wikipedia version was begun in 2004 and by the magical process of crowd-sourcing has grown from one sentence to a whole paragraph, most of which consists of links to other internet sites, and of course hundreds of different categories plus a 'stub' tag. If crowdsourcing worked, it would have been infinitely better than that by now.

I linked to a version of the article which was closely based on Thomas Reid's precis of the Prior Analytics. As for logic, your logic was that if it was a close copy of Reid's precis, it is plagiarism, if it was not a close copy, it is worse than the Wikipedia version. I confess I don't follow your logic. Does anyone else?

[edit] On the point about the Einstein article - this is a good article. But when you look at its history, it hasn't really changed since 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&oldid=15133743 I might be wrong, if it was a page move, but I have noticed with many good articles that they are the work of a single author, or a small group of authors, and most of them were complete before 2005-6. The massive popularity of Wikipedia, i.e. lots and lots of crowdsourcing, does not seem to have improved it in any way. Quite the reverse.

One or two data points is not enough to disprove a theory (not that I believe that 'crowdsourcing' is a theory rather than a buzzword masquerading as a concept).

Maybe he's just trying to be ironic.

The theory that all swans are white.

So this is all a strawman? You presented a theory that "crowdsourcing always produces the absolute best article possible, every time" and then found a counter-example?

Good job.

Not wanting to be bothered with the history of this conversation, I thought there was a valid point: that crowdsourcing was supposed to produce results by lots of little efforts all over the place.

What Peter is suggesting, and giving a couple of examples to aid the explanation, is that good articles on Wikipedia result out of a number of individuals' lone efforts on them. This is not the same process as crowd-sourcing articles. I suppose it is crowd-sourcing a whole encyclopedia, but it is not the model that is presented, that an individual article would reach perfection through the may eyes and edits of Wikipedians. If the good works are the works of individuals rather than of crowd-teams, then you cannot claim a mechanism of likely improvement towards perfection, so it is potentially a critical point to investigate.

I think that this is true in many areas - or even if it is not the work of an individual, even Jimbo has stated that the whole thing is not really the work of the great unwashed masses, but the work of a select group of rather fixated individuals with time on their hands.

Since you're going to be here all week, yes... I shall take your advice and try the veal.

Is that what you're suggesting, Peter?

I was merely replying to the following theory advanced in the course of this thread:

Theory: "No theory can be disproved by a single counter-example"

which is itself an instance of a theory which can be disproved by a single counter-example.

I didn't claim that the theory of crowdsourcing can be disproved by a single counter-example. I think the theory of crowdsourcing is one that can be weakened by a strong counter-example, and can be progressively and considerably weakened by more such examples. The theory of crowdsourcing (as applied to encyclopedias) is that by means of many small incremental edits, there can arise a work that is

1. encyclopedic, i.e. free of the trivial, the banal and the ephemeral

2. Comprehensive, i.e. would include everything that is encyclopedic, such as an article on the Prior Analytics

3. Factual and accurate i.e. would exclude popular fallacies and any 'madness of crowds' such as homeothapic cures, pseudoscience, other nonsense.



This would require proper research. My impression is that the the good articles (such as the article on Einstein that Anthony cites) are the work of a single individual, or a small group of individuals.

Also many bad articles are the work of such individuals.

Where did you come up with that definition of "the theory of crowdsourcing"? I think it's quite obviously false, and I don't think there's anyone who would seriously agree with it.

I think "crowdsourcing" works very well, but perhaps not if understood in the most literal sense. Good articles usually involve just one or two editors producing the bulk of the material, with others dealing only in the details. The best thing about the idea is not that it draws contributions from many people, but that it provides anyone with the opportunity to edit, thereby drawing out the occasional person who is genuinely interested in developing the content. Successful "crowdsourcing" cases are really not a matter of one editor adding one sentence, a second editor adding another, and then a third... It's more a matter of one committed editor getting the opportunity to write, and getting some feedback that helps fine-tune the details, and then if he or she drops out, someone else eventually comes along to take on that "lead editor" role.

Sometimes it's astonishing to see the shabby condition of a very high-visibility article. In those cases, I tend to assume that the subject lacks a committed and knowledgeable resident editor. Recently I was horrified to happen upon the Lenin article and see what a dismal little lead section it had--bear in mind that most people only read the introductions. I spent a minute or two writing a new opening paragraph that at least puts the man into some basic political and historical context.

I think a prime source would be Jimbo.

Interestingly, I do not see a contradiction between Peter's statement and your refutation. Peter makes a reasonable summary of the "wisdom of the crowds" meme, it is quite obviously false. I am not sure, however, that you can claim that nobody would seriously agree with it, you seriously underrate the naivete of people, and the cynicism of Jimbo.

No, Jimbo is on record as directly contradicting the claim that Wikipedia consists mainly of "many small incremental edits". He also is on record as being "a vocal critic of the term" crowdsourcing.



Then why do you call it a refutation?

It's a sophistical refutation.

Jon

I can and did claim it. Unfortunately, any attempt to prove me wrong is likely to end in a dispute over whether or not the person making the claim is being serious or is trolling. However, I do note that we haven't even gotten to that point yet. Your first attempt at showing someone (Jimbo) who you claim believes that "many small incremental edits" would create Peter's vision of the perfect encyclopedia, has failed miserably, as Jimbo is on record as believing the exact opposite (that a relatively small core of prolific editors is what makes Wikipedia a success).

There's still a bunch of Cyrillic text and Cyrillic pronunciation crap messing up the lede in my English Wikipedia article. You need to take that junk out of there -- it makes it painfully distracting for certainly 99% of visitors to read the lede paragraph.

I may be wrong, but I remember that article, and I thought he was saying that a relatively small group of administrators was responsible, i.e. he was referring to an administrative, not an editorial function.

Does anyone have a link to the article?

I think you are being overly pedantic as you should recognise that the "many eyes" meme has been the excuse for claiming that there is to be a likely good outcome. Are you suggesting that Jimbo has never subscribed to this?

I am aware of Jimbo's "small core" argument, but I do not believe that it is backed up by statistics if you are claiming volume of edits, and it seems that the WMF don't subscribe to it, on the basis that everyone seems very worried about flagged revisions in case this might be killing the golden goose that lays rotten eggs. Jimbo is right that there is a hardcore who define the project though this changes slowly over time.

Anyhow, again there is not a contradiction in believing that there is something in the "many eyes" and believing that there needs to be a small core of enthusiasts that are responsible for generating the bulk of the project.

The question is: is there empirical evidence that if you leave the infinite number of WikiMonkeys in a darkened room, does the encyclopedia tend towards perfection over time? I'm not sure we see that there is a trend in any particular direction. There is not a general beavering away with a clear goal in mind.

The article 'Existence' is my bellwether of progress on the project.

Here is the article in June 2001 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...ce&oldid=248903. It is not brilliant, and not wikified, and has no references at all, but it captures the essential points of the subject: the problem about what the concept of existence is, the view of Frege and Russell that it is not a predicate, the idea of an 'excluder' concept, and so on.

I don't know who wrote the article. I suspect Larry, whose lecture notes formed the basis for the original Wikipedia philosophy articles. I don't think Larry was a bad philosopher at all.

march 2003 - http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...ce&oldid=745625 hardly any change, probably because the magic dust of crowdsourcing has not worked yet.

march 2004 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...e&oldid=3065346 still no great change, except (and this is a hint of the darkness to come) a list has been added. One of the links being completely irrelevant (Viktor Frankl).

March 2005 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&oldid=12569403 the article is the same, but the list has doubled in size.

September 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&oldid=23376843 the first major change. An eccentric character called Botteville adds a long rambling personal essay. Three cleanup tags have been added (definitely a hint of the darkness to come).

September 2005 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&oldid=24102472 an eccentric character called Peter Damian completely rewrites the article, calling the earlier version 'drivel'. It was this kind of thing that later got him banned.

April 2006 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...&oldid=47237156 - unchanged from the Damian version

March 2007 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=112104850 - still no major change, except another list has been added at the end (of quotations about existence).

August 2007 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=152441935 For the last 2 years, the volume of edits has been growing massively on the article. The intro now reads "Existence is the property of being; that which is in the category of what is. The study of existence is known as ontology. For many, existence may consist of growing up, getting married, raising a family, work, and play."

September 2007 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=158649417 Many more edits. "In the Hindu religion, existence is a dream of Brahma." The article is slowly moving away from the academic conception of the subject.

June 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=219834115 A longer and much more rambling introduction has been added, together with bits of the Damian 2005 version. "In common usage, existence is the world we are aware of through our senses"

April 2009 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=285532390 Not much change over a year, except for three clean-up templates.

February 2010 - http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=344194633 someone called ZuluPapa5 has added a load of irrelevant junk about formal languages. "Calculus has two major branches, differential calculus (change) and integral calculus (area), which are related by the fundamental theorem of calculus. " "The Twelve Links of Conditioned Existence describe the empirical study of the cause and effect relationships in the analysis of phenomena arising to existence, according to dependent origination principles. This is applied for the Buddha's purpose to reduce the existence of suffering."

The article is now a complete dog's breakfast. So it takes nearly 10 years for a reasonably good article by a professional philosopher (Sanger) to be transformed into a rambling monstrosity, viewed by 10,000 people a month. Such progress.

No, I don't. But the "many eyes" argument is different from the "crowdsourcing" one, both by Peter's convoluted definition and by any reasonable one.



That's a question? Of course it doesn't.

I'll disagree with you there. Part of the problem is that I am thinking in loose definitions of these words, to me crowd-sourcing simply means that there are a mess of people out there who can be attracted to interfere, and that this mess of people also provide the many eyes, so it is not that many eyes is different, rather it is one aspect of the whole crowd-sourcing process. You may be thinking in some other definitions. Again, in general terms, the assumption that Wikipedia is watched over by many people is also the assumption that those many people will generally contribute positively, generally in small increments.

Anyhow, I'm confused. I shall look forward to next week to being locked up in a darkened room and forced to speak only Welsh for a week.

Nos da.

In the dark, all swans are white.