Sun 27 Aug 2006
Someone who doesn’t like EphBlog has been removing our link at the Williams College entry in Wikipedia. This has happened before. I did not use to care so much, but I am getting more and more into Wikipedia as time goes by. You can see our discussion here, and my request for clarification on the general policy here. Wikipedia implies fairly strongly that I, as someone closely associated with EphBlog should back off and let the rest of the Wikipedia community decide this. But the deletions do not come from registered users so they strike me as more anti-EphBlog inspired than anything else.
Comments welcome.
August 27th, 2006 at 11:13 am
My guess is people think it isn’t affiliated with the college (true) and the views posted aren’t necessarily representative of the entire student/alumni body.
August 27th, 2006 at 2:11 pm
Yes, but there are many external wikipedia links to sites that are both unaffiliated and not necessarily representative.
August 27th, 2006 at 9:11 pm
I don’t think people necessarily agree that those should be included either. EphBlog is the personal blog of David Kane, regardless of its readership or its subject matter.
August 27th, 2006 at 10:29 pm
Todd is correct. Wikipedia’s guidelines for external links ask that they be “neutral and accurate,” and the KaneBlog is neither.
August 27th, 2006 at 11:11 pm
to those who think that ephblog is neither accurate nor neutral, i challenge you to create or locate another williams related resource that provides information as comprehensively as ephblog does, while at the same time retaining the above two characteristics. if you cannot, then ephblog is probably the best treasure trove of williams related information we have, and thus should be let known to all who are interested enough in williams college to read its wiki.
August 27th, 2006 at 11:27 pm
cross-post of my contribution to the Talk page:
As a current Williams student, I don’t see Ephblog as the “personal” blog of David Kane, even if he does do the majority of the posting. The theme of the blog has consistently been any current topic related to Williams College, not his own personal life. It is one of the most active sources of Williams-related news available on the web, far more so than the college’s own site - it has been a great resource for prospective students and alumni to find out what is really going on inside Williams. It has been host to many long discussions among a variety of readers debating college news and politics. There are several other contributors apart from Mr. Kane, and it is open to anyone to begin contributing at any time. Though it may not always be neutral (as it represents the views of its individual posters, not an officially approved consensus), I have usually found Ephblog to be pretty good at correcting itself when it gets things wrong. Ephblog’s relationship to Williams is somewhat like the relationship of this Wiki to Williams - both are unofficial and edited by individuals without prior college approval, but both try to be useful sources of information. It would invalidate the entire point of this wikipedia entry if we were to not link to such a major and lively source of Williams info on the web.
August 28th, 2006 at 12:00 am
EphBlog, mostly thanks to its most prodigious author, provides frequently baseless and/or defamatory speculation. This alone should disqualify it from serious consideration as an external link. Examples include the incident with Prof. Laleian, recrimination of a Williams student acquitted of rape, and the most recent tasteless character dissection of Mayo Shattuck. I would hardly call any of these “accurate” or even valuable. Certainly not a “treasure trove”.
EphBlog is open to contribution by anyone, yes. It is not neutral, at least not by Wikipedia’s NPOV standards. Until it reflects, on average, more than just David Kane’s views, it will never be neutral. Whether or not Kane is responsive to criticism in comments or whether he changes his mind after flamewars is beside the point. Kane’s posts are deliberately tactless and incendiary, and for NPOV you would need compensation for that from all other sides.
I don’t think you can. I don’t think anyone necessarily needs to. But KaneBlog doesn’t retain the above two characteristics, and it shouldn’t be cited as an external link for people looking for a fair depiction of Williams College.
August 28th, 2006 at 12:37 am
From Wikipedia’s External Links policy:
EphBlog fails #2 and #9 outright, and #3 if you’re an author.
August 28th, 2006 at 12:41 am
Um…Ephblog was correct in that incident.
August 28th, 2006 at 12:51 am
As posted, the accusation against Prof. Laleian was speculation. Whether or not it turned out to be correct is immaterial. It clearly falls into the category of “unverified original research”.
August 28th, 2006 at 3:52 am
Oh yes, you are. Oh no, I’m not. Oh yes, you are. Oh no, I’m not.
August 29th, 2006 at 1:28 am
There is also the small matter that Laleian was not the first professor named.
August 30th, 2006 at 3:34 am
I do not think EphBlog should be linked from Wikipedia.
I would have to be much more careful about what I say here if there was much of an audience who did not know how to read critically.
So would David Kane.
August 30th, 2006 at 7:01 am
EphBlog’s audience in the aggregate doesn’t read very critically.
August 30th, 2006 at 8:11 am
If you think that it should not be linked (or that it should), then please contribute here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Williams_College
August 30th, 2006 at 4:37 pm
I don’t think it should be part of the Williams College Wikipedia entry.
Kane has racist and classist tendencies which should disqualify him from everything… in life…
August 30th, 2006 at 5:37 pm
Todd,
Very briefly, I’d say that every external link including the Williams College website fails Wikipedia tests– on a cursory reading.
And contrapositively, that a good number of sources, such as most news sources, often taken as “OK” by a cursory reading, are equally questionable by a close reading of the ‘rules’ and their history.
More here or on Wikipedia as I have time.
August 31st, 2006 at 5:24 am
If you think David Kane is racist, then you are over-interpreting idle speculation. Your interpretation is the usual, natural one from some of his statements, but I think if you read carefully and understood the entire context, then you would realize it was an over-interpretation.
Nietzsche’s ideas were misused by the Nazis, and, even today, it is easy on a first encounter to dismiss him as the proto-fascist he is not. Which is not to say David is anywhere near as brilliant as Nietzsche.
August 31st, 2006 at 12:30 pm
But more proto-fascist!