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How a Raccoon Became an Aardvark

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Re: How a Raccoon Became an Aardvark

#91

Post by taejo »

Houshalter wrote: post #42
scott_s wrote: post #28

The article claims this is an example of a falsehood starting on Wikipedia, percolating to external sources, then perpetuating on Wikipedia because it's in those external sources. That's interesting. But what's more interesting is that this may be an entirely different case: a falsehood starts on Wikipedia, percolates to external sources, and then becomes true because it is pervasive . Then it remains on Wikipedia be…

Perhaps, but it's not what anyone actually calls them. I mean I doubt it's spread into anyone's common everyday language. All of the uses were likely just using Wikipedia as a reference for writing their article.

I feel like there are actually quite a few things that many people know are "also known as", but nobody actually knows them as that. I've often read that chickpeas are also known as garbanzo beans, but I've never actually heard or read anyone calling them that (obviously in Spanish they're called garbanzos, but I mean English speakers speaking/writing in English). Similarly, do people really call a herd of boar a singularity, or do they just know that it's "called" a singularity.

Re: How a Raccoon Became an Aardvark

#92

Post by netcan »

baddox wrote: post #70
dsugarman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is it an actual falsehood? it just says also called a Brazilian aardvark, which is true for at least one person in the world and became true for a lot more after reading it. it seems like the name stuck because people liked the name.

Stylistically it's a textbook example of weasel words, which are claims that appear to represent the views of an authoritative source but which don't cite such a source. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Words... The "by whom" tag should be added to these unsupported claims. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:By_whom

I disagree.

Weasel words are a way of introducing opinions disguised as facts while absolving yourself of the need to make a specific, verifiable (or falsifiable claim). "Some say Hacker News is the the most important website about startups." The actual information in that sentence is that 'some people say this thing' but it reads like 'this thing' which is misleading. It's misleading regardless of citations.

There is nothing wrong with saying 'this thing' if that is what you mean to say. 'The Arripis is also known as the Australian Salmon' is a true and relevant statement. It's common for fish to have different names in scientific, culinary and angling contexts as well different places. Wikipedia needs to address that to be useful.

That's the reason weasel words are a hard problem. It's subtle. Sometimes opinions are important and relevant and they should be included (with citations) on their own merit. "Commonly referred to as.." is an important fact about lots of animals.

What this is is basically just a simple case of falsehood. Nobody called anything a Brazilian Aardvark at the time of the edit. It wasn't true. It's an interesting story because it became true.

Every common name for an animal had to be invented at some point. Here, because of the magic of wikipedia' revision history we can see exactly when that happened.

Re: How a Raccoon Became an Aardvark

#93

Post by fit2rule »

jamesbrownuhh wrote: post #76

It certainly exposes a flaw in Wikipedia, but perhaps not the expected one. Namely, it's not so much that anyone can edit the encyclopaedia and introduce false information, but that Wikipedia's faith in "Reliable Sources" like newspapers, magazines, and other forms of big media, is so entirely misplaced. Evidently you can't trust "proper journalism" to actually be true or correct, since many/most articles are written…

I'd consider this more of a flaw in humans, and manifest in Wikipedia, but definitely something not Wikipedia-specific. The basic problem is that people 'believe' something on the basis of collective consensus - whether its true or not, if everyone else believes it, individuals are motivated to believe it too - because of course, the group of believers is bigger than the individual. Thus, even if its not a truth, it is something to be believed - because everyone else does.

And this 'because everyone else does' is the #1 cause of problems in the world. If only we, as individuals, could resist this fallacy that something is true because others believe it. Wouldn't it be great if collectively-derived agreement was in fact an effective way to create a reality .. well, it is. And that's precisely the problem: we create the world we live in. Collectively.

Re: How a Raccoon Became an Aardvark

#94

Post by acheron »

ShowNectar wrote: post #57
scott_s wrote: post #28

The article claims this is an example of a falsehood starting on Wikipedia, percolating to external sources, then perpetuating on Wikipedia because it's in those external sources. That's interesting. But what's more interesting is that this may be an entirely different case: a falsehood starts on Wikipedia, percolates to external sources, and then becomes true because it is pervasive . Then it remains on Wikipedia be…

> But what's more interesting is that this may be an entirely different case: a falsehood starts on Wikipedia, percolates to external sources, and then becomes true because it is pervasive. Then it remains on Wikipedia because it is true. And that's only possible because informal names can be adopted, and hey, that thing does look like an aardvark. Nick names are sticky like that. This is exactly what happened to the…

I was curious about that so I checked it out a bit. According to the discussion page there, there are many references to the name "fire fox" that predate Mozilla (mainly in Chinese though some people found English citations as well). But the name has been removed from the article anyway due to over-zealous Wikipedia editors (but I repeat myself).

Re: How a Raccoon Became an Aardvark

#95

Post by baddox »

netcan wrote: post #92
baddox wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stylistically it's a textbook example of weasel words, which are claims that appear to represent the views of an authoritative source but which don't cite such a source. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Words... The "by whom" tag should be added to these unsupported claims. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:By_whom

I disagree. Weasel words are a way of introducing opinions disguised as facts while absolving yourself of the need to make a specific, verifiable (or falsifiable claim). "Some say Hacker News is the the most important website about startups." The actual information in that sentence is that 'some people say this thing' but it reads like 'this thing' which is misleading. It's misleading regardless of citations. There i…

> 'The Arripis is also known as the Australian Salmon' is a true and relevant statement.

Sure, but it's still weasel words unless it is accompanied by a citation from an authoritative source. If some random guy knows that fish as the "foobar fish," you could say "The Arripis is also known as the foobar fish." In this case, a Wikipedia contributor could rightful add the "by whom?" template tag. If there's no source cited, the statement should be removed, and if the source were cited, it would say that this name comes from some random guy, not the community of biologists, and would therefore be removed due to being irrelevant.

> Nobody called anything a Brazilian Aardvark at the time of the edit. It wasn't true.

From my understanding, the person who added that claim probably did call it a Brazilian Aardvark, so a claim like "it's called the Brazilian Aardvark" technically is true. But that's irrelevant to the weasel word diagnosis. Regardless of whether any human actually does call it that, there needs to be a source cited.

Re: How a Raccoon Became an Aardvark

#96

Post by Houshalter »

taejo wrote: post #91
Houshalter wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, but it's not what anyone actually calls them. I mean I doubt it's spread into anyone's common everyday language. All of the uses were likely just using Wikipedia as a reference for writing their article.

I feel like there are actually quite a few things that many people know are "also known as", but nobody actually knows them as that. I've often read that chickpeas are also known as garbanzo beans, but I've never actually heard or read anyone calling them that (obviously in Spanish they're called garbanzos, but I mean English speakers speaking/writing in English). Similarly, do people really call a herd of boar a sin…

I think you're right, but personally I have heard the word "garbanzo beans" before. A boar singularity sounds cool.
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