Talk:WikiSci/Wiki as A Time Saver for Researchers

From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

Th philosophy of saving time when doing literature searches is certainly valuable to all, not just the scientific community. A very good point is being made by the original author.

Based on my experience studying, conducting, and editing research, and at Wikipedia, I find this document unpersuasive. First of all, I think the writer exaggerates the time required to find articles on google. For one thing, no matter how many entries are cited, if you go through them page by page (which the author apparently has never done), you’ll typically find that google cuts them off at 1,000. And the precise use of search terms usually cuts way down on the time required. While sometimes googling is unproductive, I don’t know of a better method.

More importantly, the author is talking about scientific research. How helpful would it be for people who know nothing about a scientific subject, or who have a political ax to grind, to have unfettered access to constantly change entries in a medium designed to provide scientists constant, precise updates on the state of their field? Is the author really a scientist? Either he isn’t, or he gave insufficient thought to his email before sending it to a newsgroup, something Web posters and newsgroup members are notorious for doing.

Let’s take chemistry, for example, because it is a field about which I know absolutely nothing. What possible benefit would accrue to scientists from permitting anyone as ignorant about the field as I am to edit a chemistry wiki?

If I am not mistaken, a wiki is a form of Web-based technology. The notion implied by the author is that this technology must be radically democratic. But that is a political idea with no necessary connection to the technology, which can be set to permit any number of editors, from one to theoretically everyone in the world. And my experience has been that in practice, democratic rhetoric notwithstanding, wikis are not at all democratic.

Like the other sciences, chemistry is in theory radically democratic, but in practice undemocratic, though not in the sense that wikis are. Chemistry is democratic in the pre-1970 sense of meritocracy; anyone who can do real research in the field may contribute to it. However, it is undemocratic in the sense of the implicit definition of democratic that explicitly drives Wikipedia, i.e., people who know nothing about chemistry may not call themselves chemists and may not contribute to the field, and that includes editing a chemistry wiki.

If we followed the author’s advice, and permitted everyone to edit a scientific wiki, no scientist could rely on the information it contained.

The only reliable science wiki would have to be edited by one person or a small group, who, regardless of his possession of titles, has demonstrable expertise in the field.

Things are so much worse where controversial, non-scientific topics are concerned. At least, a few billion people who know nothing about chemistry are likely to ignore a chemistry wiki. But that is not the case where the news and entertainment media, politics, race and sex are concerned. No one is going to ignore those topics. And so, a person who actually studied a topic would see his work deleted in a heartbeat by a know-nothing or a political censor. The wiki might even develop into an alternative universe in which political propaganda rules and the facts are silenced, as Wikipedia has.

Let’s list the advantage of a wiki:

Speed.

And now, the disadvantages:

Inaccuracy;

Yahooism;

The ability of people to spread lies;

Its potential corruption into a tool of propaganda and political censorship;

And thus: unreliability.

In other words, the danger of any wiki is that it will degenerate into another Wikipedia, which has helped accelerate the decline of and propagandization of knowledge, while at the same time betraying the Internet’s promise of freedom from censorship, as it stealthily (for those readers unaware of its true character) replicates the political repression and organized lies of the public schools, higher education, and the media (including entertainment and publishing).

70.23.199.239 03:14, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Important to note

This is not very clear, but this is original source material (something that would normally be moved to Wikisource instead) that is in support of this larger Wikibook of WikiSci. Content of this nature should not make up the majority of the content of a book, but this is an acceptable appendix type of material.

It is important to also note that this may be a copyright violation, as e-mails are generally considered to be copyrighted by the original poster and can't be (generally) shared without permission of the author. This hasn't really been tested in courts to any large degree, so it isn't a hard and fast rule, but it is better to get permission from the author if possible. --Rob Horning 14:14, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

My understanding is that the courts have denied emails, as opposed to mails delivered by a private or public mail organizations copyright protection. However, when I recently googled in search of a legal citation, I couldn't find anything, one way or the other.

70.23.199.239 01:15, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I have never heard of email being exempted from copyright laws. It is written material, and copyright laws certainly cover written material. A few years ago the default in the USA was changed such that works are covered by copyright by default, without requiring an explicit copyright notice. -- 15.203.169.126 18:52, 20 March 2007 (UTC)