News flash:

Jimbo says original research is okay if you are a "trusted" cult member, and if the sourced information you're deleting isn't very important, and if you do it "quietly". I wonder if this new doctrine applies to steamy IM chat transcripts with conservative political pundits?

Jimbo is merely committing his customary form of WP:Φuk↑, half-wittingly verbalizing the actual policy that has always been in force on Wikipedia, as opposed the BS version they put out for public consumption. A period of denial, post hoc rationalization, and history-rewriting will now ensue.

Jon

Unfortunately Wikipedia (as a general rule) seems to value quantity over quality, it's like the "Walmart" of online encyclopedias. 100 crappy articles are better than 1 good article since more content = more google hits.

I edit this way all the time when I have personal knowledge of a subject, and so do most editors. I will remove or defang information that I personally know to be incorrect, it is a first approach. It's not adequate if controversy arises, but I'm not terribly tolerant of objections that are based purely on No WP:OR when the one objecting clearly has no clue at all and it's either pure ignorance or, worse, POV-pushing. I.e., the editor objecting wants the "sourced information" left in because it supports the editor's POV, and "that's what it said." But I'd never edit war over this, and even falling for the serious temptation to point out what an idiot the editor is would be a mistake.

Jimbo said nothing surprising here. And I'd never use this as a rationale for adding something that would be obviously controversial and impossible to establish with reliable source. Common sense, as the man said.

The thing is you would be totally right - if most Wikipedians had common sense.

The plot thickens. I looked more at what was on Jimbo's page and at the article history. The one asking the question of Jimbo had cited a New York Times article as a source, but, in fact, it wasn't the article itself that was a source for the claim that this was a "former embroidery factory," but a correcting note, probably placed by an editor, referring to the Thread building as such, but completely off-hand dicta. The error corrected had nothing to do with "former embroidery factory." It looks like a NYT editor just wrote that without checking, believing it but not thinking it important.

And people with actual knowledge attempted to correct it, and the editor resisted that. This edit was classic. Lecturing the other editors about "policy-based rationale" over a stupid inconsequential fact, it didn't matter if it was right or wrong, and rejecting editors out-of-hand, when they were asserting from personal knowledge, was the kind of obtuse stupidity that drives many away from Wikipedia when they run into it.

Sure. Reliable source required for material, especially anything actually controversial. No removal of clearly established sourced material necessary for balance. But this all was, in fact, based on the editor's personal opinion that it was "significant" that this was supposedly a former embroidery factory. The source he was relying upon did not establish that at all! The comment wasn't a part of the cited article itself.

I've seen this before, something accidental about a source, the way it appears, is seized upon and insisted upon. And the substance is lost.

Hah? Whut?.........

Ohhhh, so NOW he admits it: some Wikipedians are more equal than others.
Cue the pig army. (Gosh, it's amazing how much the Story Of Wikipedia resembles
the original.)

And now I see that Nightscream is an administrator, and has filed an RfAr asking ArbComm to "permanently ban" another editor. Why do I get a Bad Feeling about this?


But it did not imply that. This is accidental meaning projected onto what Jimbo wrote. Before jumping on this as Proof of what you have Always Known, maybe look a little deeper.

Jimbo was being nice to Nightscream, sure, but the fact is that, here, he was telling Nightscream that his obsessive position was, to use our technical term, fucked.

If Jimbo realized this, he's more sophisticated than I thought. Instead, he may simply have been describing how Wikipedia is supposed to work, which was good enough.

I'm afraid not: Jimbo was completely confused, and probably didn't read the links, or if he did, failed to comprehend them in detail.

According to Jimbo, Nightscream was the one doing the "original research", had the trust of Teh Community, and given the benefit of the doubt ... when all of these thing should have been awarded to Djfelm.

Did you see the sock-puppet investigation Nightscream filed against Djfelm? You'd think that a SOFIXIT type like him would spend more time at google proving his claim right rather than engaging the Drama Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Righteousness (DRASER)? It's pretty damn clear he knows that it's not whats true that matters but what you can 'prove' in court!

Basically, Nightscream is your typical Wikicult loser. "If it's in the New York Times, it must be true!" People like this should not be editing an encyclopedia, let alone given the Super Power bit.

Perhaps. But he was telling Nightscream the real policy, which meant that Nightscream's wikilawyering was fucked.

I didn't say that Jimbo knew he was doing this.
Ah, but he was writing to Nightscream, and Nightscream did do some original research (confirming what had been originally said by Djfelm).
Ah, you'd only think that if you didn't know Wikipedia.
Indeed. But this is what you get when you dream you can build an encyclopedia without coherent structure. In a certain way, Jimbo made his bed, now must lie in it. But my sense is that he'd like to find a way out. I haven't really tried to approach him directly, not for a long time (he was quite open when I did write to him long ago). I will. No rush.