User:Polentarion

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

State of the project

The Trump example

Donald Trump, the most read article in WP after several GA applications. My list of points which still should be dealt with:

  • A search for donald+trump%22+politics+doi on scholar provides about 2000 entries of actual studies. None of them went into the article.
  • The current references (about 600) are mostly online press commentaries stuck together ad libitum.
  • None of them has a doi.
  • An attempt to introduce Slavoj Žižek's comment on Trump got deleted quickly.
  • There is nothing about Trump's books
  • There is nothing on books about Trump.
  • The article lacks a something like a must read literature list.
  • The article mentions the Bibliography_of_Donald_Trump respectively the authorities control entries but doesn't cite anything out of it. OK, one of Gwenda Brail's biographical books has been quoted once.
  • That said, this article has been stuck together at random with online press clippings. It has no backing at all in scholarly sources.

It seems that non of the authors has ever read a book, from or about Trump. Will say, the most-read WP entry is being put together on the lowest amateurish level. There are several thousand serious studies, not even one has been used. And bookwise it is nearly as bad. You couldn't write a freshman's essay based on that level, at least in my halcyon days.

Rachel Dolezal

The Dolezal affair 2015 quickly ended in an controversial honey pot article, first of cause afded and then confirmed. It became an article about the person. I would have preferred one about the affair itself as I doubted the noteability of the person. I did a draft for such an article but haven't found a green light on the talk page. Already in 2015, there had been some scholarly sources, e.g. Rogers Brubakers The Dolezal affair: race, gender, and the micropolitics of identity, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2015 - Taylor & Francis. The article then had about 116 sources, all of them media snippets. We have more than 100 entries on scholar, some of them (e.g. the ProudFlesh articles) problematic as well. Non of the genuine scholarly entries had found so far its way into the article. Here the same aspects apply - I might have been to academic, sounding elitist is something you hear often on such talk pages. But as said, if we do ignore scientific or scholalry studies, we ignore knowledge. Somethings this project should avoid.

Examples from deWP

Pegida

At the end of my activities in the German project, I did a similar list on the Pegida article in deWP. It is about the rightwing movement in Germany, high visibility in the press, contentious honey pot. About 400 single references. Nearly all of them press-clippings references. There is a literature list. One may easily check that it had neither been read nor used. Just look on the single references, they don't include quotes of them. Main conclusions in the scientific abstracts are not being covered or even contradicted in the article. With regard to actual studies, there was a section about "scientists". I was disgusted by that, since if you have studies about a topic at hand, you better write the whole article with it. The section treated the studies like the press clippings, will say it was a pasticchio/ patchwork of erratic findings, it ignored results of a central study. It has been cited but resultwise ignored to allow for a biased, press clipping based interpretation. That said, it had been deemed a well sourced article - several hundreds of single reference, so what you want? and none inside dared to challenge the author. I am glad he got major flak from a German newspaper editor on another article. There is and there was something wrotten in this project.

Günter Grass

The German author Günter Grass had long been a political authority and as well an active supporter and moral authority of the moderate left in Germany, especially in cooperation with Willy Brandt. For decades, Grass was active during election campaigns, as a public speaker and in rallying friends and supporters in artist circles. His hopes to achieve a political office never came true however. His oversized role in the German literary scene and his half-baked political ideas never had been critized in the open till 2006 Grass last ditch membership in the Waffen-SS and 2012 failed lyrics about his troubled ideas about Israel went public. The whole article, which had been written old school wise with a minor list of books but no single references then suddenly changed into a honeypot with larger sections on the scandals written with media-clippings. That said, suddenly the main part of the single references were covering two single events, the rest of the article was still based on the previous literature list without single references. I started to edit the article later 2015 and was rather critical about the oversized scandal section and the lack of coverage on the actual political role for the SPD and Brandt during decades. I started to use some international scholarly works, e.g. from Siegfried Mews, Rebecca Braun, Stuart Taberner and others, which had never had been mentioned before in the article. The English speaking authors had tried to describe Grass both as an writer and a postwar German political figure. The interesting thing was that some of the coeditors had first a problem using them and came up with their reading experience from the various books. All in all, the scandalized version and the overblown sections got reduced on a normal level. The discussion about the lede finally left out boith the scandals and the political engagement.

Comments on Hayek and Randt

I have done some comments on expertise in Wikipedia, e.g. [klimazwiebel.blogspot.com/2015/06/damit-ihr-klug-werdet-expertise-bei.html on Klimazwiebel]. I doubt that the project is aware of its origins anymore. Jimbo's liking for both Hayeks essay about knowledge and the works of Ayn Randt. It is

Bionade-Biedermeier
nowadays and the guys are neither willing nor able to read nor to write an coherent text. They need just clippings to check "sourced", end of story. The point is, if you write an essay, article or scientific paper, you better start with an an abstract and overall idea and concept. It is need before you search for literature, since you have to streamline your search as well. And then you form a structure and go into details. Within Wikipedia, major articles are not being built along an overall perspective general concept or outline for a topic. Neither are important talking page conflicts being solved by lookling for the overall scholarly or professional view, or several of them, no one cares. You even get bullied if you attempt to write coherent stuff suitable for a wider audience.

Overall arguments

Recentism

  • Trump's election is a recent event, but Trumps raise and career has been scrutinized in various studies and of cause books. Not only media, but as well science (including all fields, especially the humanities) is getting quicker and more up-to-date.

Overly detail

  • I have a problem with the current fashion to discuss just the details of articles bottom up so to say. I prefer a top down approach, discussing as well the basic narrative and the overall structure. The trump talk page was focusing into detail.

Elitism

  • We should not spend half of the talk page about the hair comb meme in the yellow press and ignore the serious studies covering that internet meme in academia.
  • My point may be sorta German - the deWP has an explicit preference with regard to scholarly sources, historical studies on the top hierarchy level. It is not as strict here, but no one would cover a normal topic in e.g. ape species by newsletter clippings if you got suitable academic studies.

Conclusio:

I believe that a good article on a global celebrity may and should consist of a mixture of serious press, academic papers and non fiction and even fiction books and media. I might sound elitist, but to have not any book nor "scholarly study" involved, is the opposite of it, populism. And it ignores sound knowledge. That said, this project felt way beyound #postfactualism, no one seemed to care about sources anymore - except to smear or bully others in case of need.

I am evil

Bert is evil
as well.

This editor is almost as evil as Bgwhite's mother-in-law
I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.

Been there

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The account is identical with User:Serten II.

There is no Cabal
— 
I valdesi sono tutti rebelli
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