Wikiversity talk:Research process

[ Ask] your research questions below. Post comments, suggests, or criticisms below as well.

Research process on wikiversity.
Research may be done in user space, and, on Wikiversity, this is like student notes, it is normally respected, will not be deleted without strong cause, it can be wrong, biased, even misleading, but, in user space, it is entirely up to the user whether or not to allow the participation of others, or to allow some and not others, etc. Normally, however, anyone should be able to comment on an attached or linked user talk page. (Just as they may comment on the top-level user talk page.)

In mainspace, original research (w:WP:OR) can create neutrality issues. I have resolved these, in the past, by subpaging original research and opinion, allowing neutral overall presentation. For example, suppose we have a resource on Truth. Hey, redlink (as I write this), we don't have a resource on a fundamental topic, Truth! I may fix that.

So I do my original research on Truth, and place it in the resource. But this is intrinsically my OR, view or analysis of Truth. Making that neutral is extraordinarily difficult, without dumbing it down massively, which is what happens on Wikipedia, or, worse, the resource, made "neutral," would actually be made according to a rough social consensus, and rough social consensus might be, on average, closer to neutral than idiosyncratic opinion, but is not Truth. It is merely shared opinion. (Or the "consensus" may be warped by participation bias.)

The best guarantee of neutrality is 100% consensus. That is not perfect, and consensus can change, but the best we have is the best we have. Hence the subpage approach allows full study and expression, while the top-level page can enjoy 100% consensus. This idea actually existed early in Wikipedia history, found in some comments from Jimbo about "fringe." He believed that "fringe believers" would accept the designation of their field as "fringe," which, after all, they generally know! However, "fringe" became, in practice, a term for "kooky, wrong, crazy, to be excluded," etc., which was not what Jimbo had in mind! Fringe shades into "emerging science." Sometimes. Sometimes not.

Hence my OR on Truth could be moved to Truth/Abd, whatever is on Truth would have 100% consensus, if possible (and if serious conflict there develops, then the community becomes involved), Truth/Abd is linked from Truth as an essay or opinion or original research for which I'm responsible. Anyone else may either participate in my subpage -- if I allow it -- or create such subpages themselves, such as Truth/RandyfromBoise. Brief neutral descriptive notes can be on the top-level page, and the whole resource would encourage the study of Truth.

Mostly, original research on Wikiversity suffers from lack of attention, not from conflict. However, as Wikiversity grows and is increasingly sister-wiki linked from Wikipedia, conflict can be expected. I have, so far, handled the exceptions I've seen by using these techniques, and topics with heavy conflict on Wikipedia, with arbitrations and bannings, etc., are being explored here without sustained conflict. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 16:37, 4 September 2015 (UTC)