Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2005-02-14/Misinformation on Wikipedia

• I have once again found my comments taken out of chronology, this time, on this page. Therefore, I have placed them as they were when I wrote them. I can only guess as to the motivation of the person(s) who continue to rearrange my comments.Polycarp7 06:33, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

• As the person directly involved with Ms. Carpanelli i have to say a couple of things: i was never impolite (despite the hysterical, slightly irritating tone of her notes) and i tried to motivate her to edit the article, i even left welcoming message at her talk page. The whole affair can be followed in Talk:1755 Lisbon earthquake. I am quite amazed with what is said about her article. She acted in absolute bad faith with me and with the project and i'm finding very strange that the acts of a biased scandal-seeking person are depriving the article from feature status. I agree with Bishonen et al. objections about the philosophical section and i'm only sorry that my knowledge is not enough to answer their requirements. These are valid objections and I hope Sandover is successful in his attempt to clarify them. Ms. Carpanelli's article is not a valid objection and i cant believe that this will be held against the article in the future. muriel@pt 21:50, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC) Also posted in Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/1755 Lisbon earthquake

Anyway congratulations to Michael for the Wikipedia newsjournal, its very nice. As a side comment to this piece, its a pity that you didnt mention that the objections made to the article have nothing to do with this. muriel@pt 21:50, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. I probably could have mentioned that point - I thought starting the sentence with "Incidentally" would be enough indication that the nomination was purely coincidental to Ms. Carpinelli publishing these criticisms. I would change it now except that now this article has become part of the story itself in a way, which rather complicates things. --Michael Snow 23:53, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC) (For those wondering if it's Carpinelli or Carpanelli: Catholic Exchange has the former, while her show's website had the latter when I checked. And I don't know if it's because she's getting an influx of traffic out of this incident or something, but since I first checked that website it has added a few more pictures, including one of her, this time with her name spelled Carpinelli instead. Oh well, she doesn't feel like correcting our mistakes, but we're not even given the ability to correct hers.)

• I would like to comment on the discussion that has taken place regarding the 1755 Lisbon earthquake article. Since I am the person about whom it is claimed was "hysterical, slightly irritating" I would like to say that I apologize if my shock and surprise at such an outrageous allegation on Wikipedia was taken as "hysterical and irritating." My initial response to finding the unattributed allegation was shock, and I had no idea how to go about finding the source for the allegation. After finding Muriel Gottrop's response to my wholly ignorant and somewhat desperate query:

"Jesus! Then remove the allegation. Its not my essay, it's our (like in me, you and everybody else here) article. muriel@pt 13:23, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)"

to be completely offensive, and irritating, despite her claim to have never been impolite, I responded by becoming more firm and resolute in attempting to find a source, and commenting on her and the original author's apparent lack of regard for source citations by my refusal to change the allegation. In short, my comment that "I am simply going to leave it for all to read, that the writer cited no source, because no source exists except within the writer's mind," was not in response to Ms. Gottrop's "Dear anon user, if you disagree with the article in some way, you are invited to change it," but to her quite irritated and offensive "Jesus! Then remove the allegation. Its not my essay, it's our (like in me, you and everybody else here) article. muriel@pt 13:23, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)" In addition, it was not JUST the allegation I was intending to leave in, but my request for a source as well. Since I initially didn't know whom to contact or how to request a source be cited, but I found I could edit the article, I simply placed my request for a source within the body of the allegation, as I believe you have noted. It was, therefore, not just the allegation, but my request for a source that I intended to leave in. That way, perhaps, someone would come forward with a source, and/or people reading it would know that a source was not listed. I believe this, and proper chronology of the discussion page remarks, gives the more complete context for the discussion that ensued.Polycarp7 15:45, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I believe also that you have made your conclusion from the discussion page of the article, which was totally out of chronology. I have attempted to place the discussion in proper chronology, from oldest at top to newest at bottom. This should give a better idea of the discussion as it happened.

I believed then, and I believe now, that persons who make ostensible claims should be held accountable for their research by citing a source, not let off the hook for interjecting personal bias or poor scholarship into an article they are largely responsible for writing. Finding the unsourced allegation in the first place, Ms. Gottrop's taking of the Lord's Name in her first correspondence with me, and her charge of "complaining" because I was asking for a source, certainly set the tone for my remarks. Her subsequent posts were quite polite, and while mine might have been irritating, I do not believe they were hysterical. Ms. Gottrop did eventually apologize for any offense, and I accept that.

Speaking of poor scholarship, and possible bias, I now question the assertion under a photo of priests being present at a hanging to be "supervision" by the priests. I have found no such evidence of priests supervising the hanging of looters in the aftermath of the Lisbon quake. I cited some sources on the article's discussion page. Priests are often present at state sponsored executions, even today in our own country, but it is hardly "supervision." Careful research into the eyewitness accounts make no mention of priests having anything to do with these hangings. Just because that statement appears under a caption on a picture somewhere (the about.com site) doesn't mean it was under the caption of original source material. Even the article in question links to external images of the city - one links to the Kozak collection, which also contains this picture. That caption reads: "KZ119: Lisbon, 1755: refugees. Lisbon a few days after the earthquake. Camping outside the damaged town, executions of robbers and looters. (Copper engraving, Germany, 1755) Lisbon, Portugal." The Wikipedia caption seems to prefer the about.com's suggestion that priests were involved in the hangings in ways other than for religious rites.

I am not a contributer to Wikipedia, nor do I wish to be. But I have used it, and my son has used it quite a bit. As a user, therefore, and the primary educator of my son, I feel I have a perfect right to ask for sources, not change the article myself. I will not shield him from truthful accounts of the bad behavior over the years of some members of the Catholic Church, but the only use I have for anti-catholic bias is to show him it exists.

I also object to the comment that "she doesn't feel like correcting our mistakes, but we're not even given the ability to correct hers." First of all, ad hominem attacks warrant no further comment, but the misspelling of my name is hardly a mistake of the same proportion to the one Wikipedia has made by failing to attribute a source for such an outrageous claim that appears in no credible source, or in any eyewitness account that I have checked. Second, if I made any mistake at all, it is my failure to see how I acted in "bad faith" with anyone. At the time of my correspondence with Ms. Gottrop, I had no intentions of writing anything other than a letter to the editor of my local paper. That Catholic Exchange said they would help me write an article was not known at the time. I did not mention her name, and the few people who may have checked out the discussion page after reading my article could see that I did not mis-quote her or take her quotes out of context. But I will be certain that in a future article on this subject, which will be forthcoming, I will link to the discussion page for the 1755 Lisbon article so anyone interested can read it. And since I was charged with "messing up" the discussion page, I took some time to organize it in chronological order, to make the reading of it more logical, as noted above.

Neither am I a "biased scandal-seeking person," but I do not back down from anti-Catholic bias when I see it. This charge is bogus, and lacks any merit. And as for the recent postings of pictures of me on the Truth Matters web page, the show is relatively new, and that portion of the web site is constantly under construction. To my knowledge, the pictures have been up since the show's inception. I find mention of this to have no bearing in this matter, except to assert the specious idea that a submission at Truth Matters which misspelled my name somehow doesn't allow Wikipedia to correct "my" mistakes. I didn't correct your mistake - I left that up to you, but by all means, write to the web-master at Truth Matters and tell him someone mis-spelled my name!

Finally, as I said in my discussion, I found the Lisbon article to be well done, and tainted only by this unattributed allegation. I had no bone to pick with Wikipedia when I first saw the allegation, and I regret that this has caused the article to lose some recognition. Simply correcting the error was good enough for me - in fact, I commend you for doing so, and respect you for it. But due to the number of places where this allegation now can be found, with Wikipedia sourced, I would still like a credible source to be put forth, or accept some responsibility for the propagation of this slander. So far, I have seen little regret, or even recognition of the gravity of the error. And, after having my Faith insulted, reading ad hominem attacks upon me, and, what I feel to be unjust criticisms of me, for what I believe was simply insisting that credible sources be cited, rather than change the article, I do now have a bone to pick. Users of Wikipedia should not have to endure this. Polycarp7 08:43, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

What kind of correction could the WaPo have run?

It does not seem clear that the information was false. I find an almost identical quote in a 1990 book (a most unreputable one: an astrology book edited by Joan McEvers; and yes I only know this because a minute's googling pulled it up); and as she is no historian, I doubt McEvers was indulging in original scholarship. My money's on a shared secondary source. I don't yet know what it is; but complaining about the source and "not being able to find verification" is quite different from falsification. Perhaps Viajero will enlighten us one day, or some knowledgable soul provide other references that say such a statement is hogwash. Until then we should be clear on the distinction between unsourced and mis-information. +sj + 10:14, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Citation

In a paper by Andy Szybalski, a Master's student in Computer Science at Stanford University. Why it's not a wiki world (yet)(pdf). --Michael Snow 04:01, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)