

Knuth's opinion on Knuth's opinion was reverted from Wikipedia as uncited - gritzko
http://no-gritzko-here.livejournal.com/52165.html

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gort
The story is incorrect. Knuth's comment was not removed because it was
uncited. It was removed because Wikipedia has a policy that articles should
not mention Wikipedia unless there's a good reason for them to.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Self-
references_to_av...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Self-
references_to_avoid#Articles_are_about_their_subjects)

There was a time years ago when every time some public figure mentioned
Wikipedia, that fact itself would make it into their Wikipedia article. That
was lame. Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia about Wikipedia.

When User:Staecker removed Knuth's comment, it was with the edit summary "rm
self-reference" which is shorthand for "removed unneeded reference to
Wikipedia", and has nothing to do with the quote being uncited.

~~~
michael_dorfman
And I have to say that this is a good thing.

If you're going to attempt to write a serious encyclopedia article about
Knuth, trivia like his opinion of Wikipedia has no place.

~~~
christopherolah
Not necessarily. He's one of the leading figures in CS, his opinion on major
projects like Wikipedia strikes me as significant...

~~~
wmf
What does Wikipedia have to do with CS? What does Knuth's expertise in
algorithms and typesetting have to do with Wikipedia?

------
ZeroGravitas
A similar story about Betrand Meyer:

<http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?BertrandMeyerAndWikipedia>

Personally, I think Wikipedia (if you can refer to such a collection of
volunteers as if it had one mind) is in the right in both these situations.

One thing I think people forget, is that if you make a rule it has to apply to
everyone, not just the people you (dis)like.

~~~
Nycto
I completely agree. I equate it to coding standards. Whether I indent with two
spaces or four doesn't really matter until both get mixed into the same code
base. The point is not that these rules are arbitrary, but that they are
standardized. The same goes for the color of code samples in Wikipedia
articles: no matter what article you are looking at, the code will look the
same.

------
jrockway
This is fine. I can make my reverse DNS be knuth.standford.edu also.

All Knuth needs to do is to publicly write about his opinion (perhaps on his
website). Someone will read it, someone will add that to Wikipedia with a
link, and everything will be perfect. It's less effort on his part, and it
ensures that Wikipedia maintains some level of accuracy.

~~~
ubernostrum
"All Knuth needs to do is to publicly write about his opinion (perhaps on his
website)."

Bzzt. Wrong.

Knuth needs to write his opinion on his web site, and then a mainstream media
source needs to report that Knuth wrote his opinion on his web site. If a
mainstream media source reports something that contradicts Knuth's word, then
that report, and not what Knuth himself wrote, will be considered "correct"
for Wikipedia.

~~~
cperciva
_Knuth needs to write his opinion on his web site, and then a mainstream media
source needs to report that Knuth wrote his opinion on his web site._

I believe wikipedia policy says that self-published sources can be accepted if
there is nothing better.

 _If a mainstream media source reports something that contradicts Knuth's
word, then that report, and not what Knuth himself wrote, will be considered
"correct" for Wikipedia._

Yes and no. Biographies of living people have a special caveat that editors
should err on the side of removing disputed material.

~~~
ubernostrum
"Biographies of living people have a special caveat that editors should err on
the side of removing disputed material."

Oh, there are plenty of policies. Just try getting them enforced when a couple
admins decide that they want an article to be a particular way (as has been
known to happen with such articles).

------
sown
I hate to say it, but an IP is not as authoritative as a quote. I dunno what
to say.

~~~
a-priori
My thoughts exactly... even if it's him, it's still both uncited and "original
research". If Knuth put up a page on his website, he could then link to it on
Wikipedia and the edit would stick.

~~~
asjo
So basically the one person that knows the most about the subject at hand can
not be trusted to edit wikipedia directly, but must go a longer roundabout
way?

~~~
mhansen
That's the policy. Because making exceptions for 'the one person who knows the
most' doesn't scale.

~~~
asjo
That probably makes sense. They should remove the "wiki"-part of the name,
though.

~~~
cema
Exactly!

I think they have lost the way. And it has started affecting the project.

------
babyshake
Wikipedia's policy is to not allow original ideas or opinions, even if it's
from the subject of the article. This is fairly uncontroversial compared to
some of the other things, like restricting edits to logged-in users.

~~~
derefr
Perhaps edits could be signed with a person's public key (verifying that it
was them posting), thus making that edit, in and of itself, the primary source
that the [following] edit can cite? It makes sense to rely on our IRL trust
network to verify claims inserted by anonymous IP addresses, but when an
actual, verifiable _identity_ comes into the mix, that process should be
short-circuited.

~~~
hughprime
Wikipedia generally discourages edits by the subject of the article anyway.
This policy is designed less for the likes of Donald Knuth and more for the
likes of the borderline-notable people of the world who might be tempted to
use wikipedia as their own CV.

~~~
jaaron
And even if they did use it for their CV, so what? Who really cares? Does that
really _hurt_ wikipedia?

Unless the information is clearly (1) false or (2) not in a neutral point of
view, then it's perfectly good information about the subject.

~~~
baha_man
I would care and yes, it would hurt wikipedia if people were allowed to add
information about themselves which was not 'notable'.

------
radu_floricica
A person's opinion is not really one of the things I'd trust them with. Think
about a politician's official opinion on X vs his actions.

Not to mention this could well have been one of Knuth's students or
acquaintances. Like others pointed out, the same opinion posted on his website
would have had much heavier weight. "Citation needed" was by far the correct
reaction.

------
teeja
One thing that slowed down WP was the suddenly perceived need for adding
references ... unrequired for years. So a lot of effort got turned into
improving the quality and reliability of millions of already-existing
articles.

A lot of people didn't have the know-how or time to do that. Locating reliable
and authoritative references can be very time-consuming. (Google Books has
helped a lot!)

Despite that, and despite many articles being combined with others , millions
of articles have been added in the meantime. I don't understand any concern
about this process: it's all healthy. For the subjects I dig into, it's
reliable 90% of the time when I check it out.

------
gojomo
Most comments are discussing the specifics of this event -- and of course
Knuth's edit was problematic by a number of established WP policies.

But are there other policies which could capture this sort of primary-source
contribution/correction?

Could primary sources and original researchers prove their
identity/credibility and provide reliable material directly to Wikipedia?

Would such alternate policies be a good idea -- and maybe even necessary,
given trends in media?

It's convenient to rely on the traditional informational middlemen -- news
media and scholarly publishers -- but that world is shrinking, and lagging all
the topics Wikipedia could usefully cover.

~~~
Perceval
Given the degree to which established academics disagree with one another,
often in a vituperative and acerbic manner _in public_ , I'm not sure having
direct contribution from 'experts' will improve anything.

An encyclopedia is a tertiary source and Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. That
means Wikipedia is not a repository for primary source material (that would be
Wikisource), and nor is it a place to publish secondary source material. As a
tertiary source, it is there to report and summarize the state of the debate
between published, verifiable secondary sources.

~~~
gojomo
That's the traditional, official-doctrine view. But you're still citing _what
is_ rather than _what's best_. Maybe the working definition of 'encyclopedia'
needs to change.

No previous encyclopedia welcomed all editors, or changed second-by-second, or
had so many articles, or enjoyed the benefits of mass digital storage and
instantaneous global networking.

Maybe the next steps in redefining a reference encyclopedia will be just as
beneficial as the steps taken so far. Someone needs to try to find out.

 _Nupedia::Wikipedia_ as _Wikipedia::TBD_

------
Agathos
It's comforting to see that even demigods get it wrong sometimes. Knuth
shouldn't have used Wikipedia as his blog.

~~~
hughprime
I looked at the edit in question. He didn't just add in his opinion on
wikipedia out of the blue, he corrected a misstatement of his opinion by
someone else.

In the end, the whole sentence was removed by a third party on the grounds
that Knuth's opinion on wikipedia really doesn't matter enough to be part of
the Knuth article anyway.

~~~
Agathos
Someone else started it, but Knuth continued it. So two people made mistakes.
It's understandable and I might do the same in his situation (once I'm
important enough for an article, of course). But it's still against policy and
if it continued some people's articles would read like blogs.

