Wikiversity talk:Original research/Archives/2010/January

Making this policy official
Dear all! Please read through the policy and discuss any unclear points, or things that need improvement. The voting procedure will be started after this discussion. --Gbaor 09:10, 29 January 2010 (UTC)


 * The part about making it clear when material is original research is good, but we also need to state exactly how we will do that. One suggestion is a template on pages or sections that include OR.  Possible text: "This section contains original research.  While this is allowed at Wikiversity, be aware that such material may be less reliable than well-established facts and theories."  Also, how do we know if the material has been peer reviewed (and by how many people) ? StuRat 14:25, 29 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Maybe a system similar to W:Wikipedia:Good article nominations can be developed/modified for peer reviews of OR.


 * Sections or texts containing OR are marked by being added to an OR category, or by using template (as suggested above), then submitted for review by the author.
 * Reviewers add comments which are then transcluded to the discussion pages of the submitted OR texts.--Harkey 16:29, 29 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I don't think a category alone is sufficient, since they would only see that after the article, possibly accompanied by many other categories, and probably won't understand the implication that this page is potentially less reliable, as a result. I'd prefer a template at the top, or, better yet, both a template and category.


 * I'd also like to review the existing template(s), if anyone can point me in that direction. StuRat 17:28, 29 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Agree about the need for a relevant template to be placed near the OR text. I thought of the category idea to put all the texts needing peer review together on a page or list. I've been having a glance at Category:Templates but can't see anything really pertinent. Maybe one could be modified?--Harkey 17:52, 29 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I am also for a template which adds the relevant category as well. Acoording to this there is no template dealing with original research on WV (which is strange, because I thought I saw one...). Anyway, to create a new one is not a problem. --Gbaor 15:50, 30 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I think that the rationale and process need a bit more clarification. The creation of a template would be most useful, please. It needs to point to Peer review or Peer review which in turn need editing to differentiate between review of learning materials and review of original research, or maybe create a new page just for peer review of original research? (With a snappier title than that, of course!!)--Harkey 16:26, 30 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with you. The biggest problem is, that these "Peer review" guidline pages are non-developed, and also that the peer review process is not present on WV (or at least the reviewed pages are not marked as such). --Gbaor 12:51, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Chicken and egg situation really? I think we have to develop both the policy and the process. Do contributors and reviewers need to by pointed to guidelines such as Help:Paper so that the form of the original research is made clear and submissions can be judged against them? It would be pretty easy then for reviewers to have a checklist of these criteria. More importantly though, is how can we recruit/guarantee subject expertise in the peer reviewer? In some circumstances it would be fairly easy for a "trusted person" using common sense to spot a prank or vandalism but more sophisticated ruses would be harder to detect without specific subject expertise. The policy of tagging and categorising such articles as original research has to be a must in the policy. Would a subject tag or the requirement to add the article to a specific section (say, genetics or botany etc.) of a peer review page help to direct peer reviewers to their area of expertise? On Wikipedia reviewers have their own specialities.--Harkey 18:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I have revised Help:Paper to take account of the modifications that need to be made before putting a peer review of OR in place. Any comments or suggestions?Harkey 16:37, 6 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I suggest that the policy should say that Original research should be submitted in the form of a paper.Harkey 16:57, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Wow! I didn't realize there was a discussion about this going on right now. As per my discussion with Gbaor on another page, I don't think there's a problem with the page as it currently stands. The wording is too vague to be an effective policy, but I don't think now is the time to change the wording and make it one. We know so little about what hypothetical OR situations might appear on the far-off horizon, I don't think it is useful to plan in advance for these. I am heavily involved with the OR on Wikiversity and have communicated with a number of other users who also conduct OR. I can't name a single example of a User whose OR compromised the integrity of the site because of its "crankiness." I also can't name any situations in which Users were complaining about other Users' OR, a possible indication that the OR policy might need to be revisited. If there don't seem to be any problems, why are we moving toward making the OR policy more difficult to change?

I think the real issue on WV is keeping partly complete OR projects active, not attempting to evaluate or restrict OR. I can name many examples of partly complete OR projects whose founders lost interest in the site. This is not a policy problem, but a problem with the nature of WV's community. At the moment I think our efforts are better spent publicizing WV on Wikipedia, where we can try to recruit a larger group of core WV users, than developing this as a policy. --AFriedman (talk) 04:44, 7 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, as a recent migrant to Wikiversity from Wikipedia, I have found that the number of "temporary" and "unofficial" policies and "partly complete" projects is both disorientating and off-putting. The WV community might not lose interest if they were provided with more structure and encouragement rather than being viewed as a "problem". Experienced Wikipedia editors, like me, are probably well aware of the existence of Wikiversity but are confounded by its complexity so retreat back into their familiar and more rewarding territory.


 * However, this is not the main issue of the current conversation. I have dwelt, so far in the conversation above, over-much on research outcomes rather than the whole issue of the original research process. The links at the foot of the page lead the reader on a circular tour of questions and uncertainties. There have been few recent attempts, with the notable exception of the article being developed by User:Darklama at Research process, to tackle the questions constructively. My take on this is that we need to undertake a comprehensive revision of all the articles relating to research, amalgamate some, add content to others and delete some. Then provide an overview or summary article. There are numerous articles in existence that are badly categorised, assigned to inappropriate name spaces and causing confusion. Where does a reader/writer look for answers rather than questions? In my opinion leaving well alone and letting things ride is not the answer to getting Wikiversity moving in the right direction. Finally, policies should be viewed as enabling and encouraging rather than problematic and restricting.Harkey 17:23, 7 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I think the reason there aren't many "official" policies is because the Wikiversity community doesn't really want to be told this is how you must do things or that you cannot do certain things. People just don't seem to want to be bogged down by structure. Most problems seem to find a way to resolve themselves without a policy, and people don't want to create policy in the absent of a problem. Another thing is policies on most projects tend to focus on what you cannot do which can be frustrating for people just getting started when what they need is answers on what they can do and how to go about doing it. Even on Wikiversity attempts to write policy usually end up becoming restrictive and problematic rater then being enabling and encouraging. I think enabling and encouraging isn't easy to achieve, and can quickly become frustrating to work on, so we end up with a bunch of unfinished proposals that don't really work to help people find answers. This original research proposal has those problems. If you take a look at Regarding Research you can see for example there are at least 3 main ways to deal with research that someone took the time to identify that Wikiversity participants have discussed using. I think a way can be found to provide some answers without committing Wikiversity to specific practices or limiting options. -- dark lama  19:51, 7 February 2010 (UTC)
 * The reason why I suggested to make the policy official was, that OR can be practiced at WV without limitations, but there is not any official "policy" saying this. I largely agree with AFriedman and Darklama in their views, but I think that we have to have a "policy" for this, not to restrict users in OR, but more to "advertise" the possibilities of OR at WV. So if we can include this into the official wording of the "policy" it would be fine for me. --Gbaor 10:30, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -attr.Edmund Burke

Wikipedia, Wikiversity etc. are based on an ideology along the lines of knowledge should be freely available and free. BUT, there are guys out there who are bad, mad and sad, and any combination thereof. Some of these guys are highly intelligent and don't share Wikipedia's ideals. They may be motivated by money, religion, politics, power, self gratification, etc. There are some who see it as being in their own best interests to use, or even sabotage, Wiki projects to further their own bad, mad or sad interests. While some are simply immature individuals whose obvious acts of vandalism result in no permanent damage, there are those who are more subtle and devious.

In a conventional university setting, there are procedures in place to prevent the bad and misguided or naive guys from carrying out any research that is considered to be unethical (or illegal in that country). These procedures do not prevent the good guys from doing clever, idealistic and imaginative research; they protect and promote them and the university gains kudos by having robust ethical research policies in place. Its research and publications are trusted.

In most western countries it is a legal requirement for institutions carrying out research to have an ethics committee. The very least that Wikiversity should do is to protect its own and its contributors interests, by stating officially that any research that is promoted or published on the site must be ethical and legal. The follow on, though, is that there have to be definitions and procedures to back up the policy and they have to be adhered to by everyone who submits work. It follows that someone has to ensure that this is done. It would appear that some custodians are prepared to tackle the easy jobs like blocking obvious acts of simple vandalism or spamming. They are less inclined to engage in making and enforcing complex and difficult policy decisions.

As a user who has derived a great deal of intellectual benefit through my, so far, very short encounter with Wikiversity, I offer this contribution to the debate in a constructive and supportive spirit. I admire and respect the work done by custodians and I would hate to see everyone's work brought down by an oversight at this time. --Harkey 09:53, 10 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I have made some changes in the text of the proposal mainly reorganizing things (to a more logical structure - at least for me) and adding the main points of our discussion here. Please check it. As for the review process: It will be relatively complex to set it up, but surely we will have to deal with it as well. For now I propose a step-by-step approach and make this (OR) proposal suitable for the voting, and then we will proceed further. --Gbaor 14:08, 10 February 2010 (UTC)