Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/December 2006/Cite and Verify Sources

Cite and Verify Sources

This thread started above at #Control on staff.

You are right indeed. Although I would like to point out the significance of reading books. I joined in the discussions on Citizendium where some participants mentioned the academic method: experts in the academic world who disagreed with each other wrote books or articles, so they could describe in detail what their argument is. If we don't read the books and follow the discussions that have taken place in the last couple of centuries, then expertise will be hard to acquire.--Daanschr 17:35, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikiversity should make sure that it provides wiki participants with tools that help non-experts cite and verify reliable sources. This skill set is one of the most important cultural artefacts from the academic world and it needs to be central to what we do here at Wikiversity. --JWSchmidt 17:50, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with that. However, some practical issues have to be taken care of regarding enforcing this policy. What will we do when a vast majority of the users of Wikiversity will be not interrested in verifiability? When an article without sources is detected, is it simply deleted, or will the creator of this article be warned for the deletion up front or guided to change the article? Some articles about courses don't have the sources cited. I created a course myself which is about a book, but I didn't enter page numbers to remarks I made about this book, so this article is not sufficient at the moment.--Daanschr 08:11, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Simple: Wikiversity is not a "playpen". The project should not put up with "nonsense". If a majority of users treat it as such, then in a sense it is not the place that it was meant to be. Most of the time, the odd thing about a Wiki is that it works in practice, but fails in theory. I think the rule of thumb should be this: references where necessary, but not necessarily. In other words, if I write something "off the top of my head" I should know where to look for information to support that, and be able to provide a citation for it. In fact, I should be able to have it handy - if someone were to ask me what was the 17th letter appearing in the 3rd sentence on page 2, I can say what that is. There is an odd thing about "trust" over the internet - trust where reciprocated. When not, well, this is not the place to play games with online integrity. --HappyCamper 13:17, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I will use Wikipedia as an example again, because I don't know of any other good examples of wikis used for acquiring and spreading knowledge. Larry Sanger, one of the founders of Wikipedia wrote about the first year of Wikipedia that even the most simple rules had to be enforced. Articles turned into talk pages. It had to be enforced that discussion was only possible in the talk page and not in the main page of an article which was supposed to perform to the format of an essay, as it is today on Wikipedia. What also had to be enforced was that political discussions or even personal ones were excluded from the talk pages. To be able to ensure that even the simplest rules on Wikiversity will be obtained, it will be necessary to have a sort of law enforcement. Wikipedia was not successful in ensuring that verifiability of sources became important. The result of this is that my university explicitly demands that students don't use wikipedia to get information. If we want to be respected by the academic community, then it is mandatory to live up to a basic level of methodology. The scholarly ethics are designed for this purpose, among others. How are we going to ensure that the rules on Wikiversity will be obeyed by the users, without becoming too bureaucratic?--Daanschr 16:12, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

If you are in traditional publishing you can set and enforce explicit rules for how authors have to cite sources, but it only makes sense to take that approach if you are free to limit participation to authors who have training and experience in how to select, cite and verify reliable sources. The entire matter is made more complex in Wikiversity because we allow anyone to edit, even if they do not know about the need for citations or understand how to go about doing a good job of citing sources. At a wiki, it is up to the community to define and enforce standards for citations to sources, plus, in an education-oriented wiki, I think we have a special obligation to help participants learn how to cite good sources. Wikipedia has been involved in a long drawn out process of trying to get editors to cite sources.....a struggle that has gone on for five years. There is a significant amount of collective wisdom that now exists in the Wikipedia rules for citing reliable sources. It would not be crazy for Wikiversity to adopt the Wikipedia policies and guidelines as a starting point. However, I think that Wikipedia has a tradition of being lax in enforcing the rules about citation and verification of reliable sources. Many wiki contributors have no training in how to select, cite and verify reliable sources. I think all Wikimedia Foundation projects would benefit if there were a "school" where editors could go to learn how to select, cite and verify reliable sources. If Wikiversity tried to take on the task of educating editors of Wikimedia Foundation projects about how to cite sources I think that would be an important community service. --JWSchmidt 16:30, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be an idea to start a course of 'methodology' which will be mandatory for those who want to get high up in the hierarchy. The contents of what will be taught at this course should be open to change.--Daanschr 16:56, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Would you volunteer to do a draft for that? --HappyCamper 19:18, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I will give it a shot, but I have to work on my final paper as well. Also, I have hardly any experience in teaching. I once taught a class of 12, 13 years old about Athens and Sparta for 50 minutes and I have lots of experience in keeping order in classes of 4 to 8 years old, but that is very different from teaching adults. So, I hope that others will help me in the process.--Daanschr 21:53, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

What I don't understand is "how" we are to cite sources. We aren't producing scholarly articles, we are producing learning materials. How could I cite something like this: Simple addition flashcards?--Rayc 19:59, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

That's what I meant earlier by "...references where necessary, but not necessarily" :-) --HappyCamper 20:31, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

The practical reality of providing citations for wiki content is that most people cite no sources unless there is a dispute. However, you can always try putting something like "flashcards mathematics education" into a Google search and see what comes up. Google Scholar has 1,090 hits for "flashcards mathematics education". Just by looking at what other people have done you might get some new ideas or find that you want to make some external links to useful resources. I would like to know if any research has been done that concerns forcing young students to do math problems quickly. Do such teaching "methods" help students pass standardized tests but turn them off from mathematics? --JWSchmidt 20:52, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I wondered that too. I know Piaget’s Theory and Perry’s Theory of Development of College Students, and the MBTI tests. Certain types of students must like the method, just not all. I hope we will be able to classify what type of a learner someone is and then point them to the most helpful resource, meaning we'll have to do the same material in many different ways.--Rayc 00:44, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

It depends on the subject whether citation is necessary. I want to make a strong case for social sciences, but I don't know how necessary it is for other fields of study.--Daanschr 21:53, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

We may wish to keep in mind that humanity reinvents the wheel all the time. While citing sources is a traditional and useful technique in a fairly closed environment, such as academia, where standard previous knowledge is routinely taught as a basis for getting started; it is less useful to someone who has reinvented the wheel as necessary and is willing to explain to others what they have done. Rather than trying to establish some bureaucratic rules (without a legitimate bureaucracy) which can be enforced arbitrarily upon random users (since in a "voting is evil" culture acknowledged consensus or legitimate authority exists only after all those in disagreement have moved on for the brief time that exists while no newcomers have arrived with alternate views) it might be better to simply encourage the addition of citations where individual contributors feel it is worthwhile tracking down appropriate information to cite. I doubt an animator who has contributed an animation technique learned or developed in the course of his/her work will be offended by someone else adding a citation to formal literature providing useful insight into the origin or efficacy of the technique. I suspect the same animator faced with a big community controversy aimed at forcing him/her to personally look up a formally published source for a technique they independently evolved or reinvented in the course of their professional work (to satisfy rabid roving bands of citation enforcers threatening to delete their work if such citation is not provided immediately upon demand as per rules agreed upon somehow somewhere but never formally ratified) will probably simply move on and explain to anyone who will listen what a waste of time participation at Wikiversity turns out be. A simple expression of interest or some chit chat on the talk page aimed at allowing the person who thinks a citation is appropriate to look for information to cite themselves might be perceived by the originator as interested in the topic and be received more positively. This alternate approach might even lead to word of mouth advertising that information published at Wikiversity improves with random community participation. Further, it is a fact that much human knowledge is not easily accessible online for citation or verification. I think one of the major contributions of Wikipedia and Wikiversity will be to help bridge this electronic/paper divide between those who have access to expensively published and controlled archives and those who have access merely to an internet communications device. Rather than attempting to force people to add citations perhaps we should merely acknowledge or celebrate that a citation is a useful contribution and encourage participants to make them when they feel like making a useful contribution. We are after all an independent project of volunteers with no formal structure beyond a few mandates from our benefactor, the Wikimedia Foundation. Ultimately with no or few volunteers, there is no viable Wikiversity project. Mirwin 05:14, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

In other posts on this forum, I wrote that i am in favour of inclusiveness. I want to include anyone on Wikiversity, who want to be a part of it. This means that I agree with you. It would be an idea to start a section within Wikiversity which will try to reach a certain level of academic expertise and which will try to establish contacts with Open Universities and traditional universities. Other parts of Wikiversity can focus on promoting the fun of learning and trying to establish a pleasant community for all contributors.--Daanschr 10:51, 8 December 2006 (UTC)