User talk:Pgallert
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Oral citations
[edit]Sorry to bother you again. Have you ever asked Jimbo Wales what he thinks about this? If not, that might be a good call as it’s about your vision for Wikipedia? This really ought to come to fruition, at least in some form, and dialogue with/feedback from Wikipedia's visionary might be very useful Kowal2701 (talk) 12:08, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
- No, I haven't. He's busy and can't solve everything, and I think that's the kind of topic he would rather not get involved in. We need Jimbo for the political issues. The cultural stuff must get consensus or support among editors, otherwise it is not going to fly. --Pgallert (talk) 17:33, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
- That makes sense. Not really my place to ask, it’s of course up to you, but are there plans for the next steps regarding how to progress this? Asking other academics how they would solve this problem? Coordinating with Wikimedia chapters? I think the only way the we get the community on side is by having a developed and actionable proposal (although we can use the village pump idea lab) Kowal2701 (talk) 17:52, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
- From my side his is currently dormant, TBH. Life got in the way of further activism of mine. I think what it needs is more interesting examples of article content that cannot be referenced in any other way. --Pgallert (talk) 16:32, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- That's understandable. Knowledge about local phenomena, traditional oral history, TK, and TEK are the obvious ones. Looking at instances where academics conduct oral interviews to gather evidence might be fruitful, such as oral history. Unfortunately, we may have to think more about how this would benefit WP's coverage of, for instance, US-related articles, or parts of the world that don't have strong oral traditions anymore. Biographies maybe, where someone can interview the subject or someone closely related (WP:IS issues though). How would you differentiate between reliable and unreliable people, or would you just attribute when unsure? The biggest universal area of knowledge currently untapped by WP is local, we might do well to list types of local articles, settlements and landmarks are the obvious ones. Local culture as well. That might be a good way to frame this to the community, and make arguments surrounding TK/oral tradition in tandem? Kowal2701 (talk) 00:39, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- Being a knowledge bearer of a community is a role, informally or formally awarded after many decades of participation and service. These are the people that are the community's encyclopaedia, and these are the sources I have in mind to collect verifiable knowledge. "Verifiable" in turn means that another designated knowledge bearers would give roughly the same account, and that ordinary community members would send you to them instead of giving their own opinion. I just have to convince fellow editors that this structure exists, and that it has been working for millennia. --Pgallert (talk) 16:33, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- Agreed, that is where the focus should be. The first step is probably to find common ground with (mostly) everyone in the community regarding that this problem exists, and that it needs a solution. We could then go out from there bringing people with us, discerning valid concerns and addressing them? I think a valid concern might be less about the truthfulness of the source, but of the editor conducting the interview, in that they don't essentially fabricate a citation. It's easy to check whether a written citation is fabricated by just googling the source, less so for an oral citation, which is why I previously thought recording the audio would address this (interviews could include the source explaining who they are).
- Regarding local knowledge in western countries, I've been trying to think who I would ask, but have struggled, it seems unlikely there'd be people who have extensive knowledge that hasn't been written down, or rather that haven't derived their knowledge from writings. There might still be some merit to this, but a lot less than I previously thought. Kowal2701 (talk) 18:16, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- Sorry, I see that meta:Research: Oral citations#Oral citations & multilingual transcripts includes voice notes, transcriptions, and translations. Reading through Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 115#Oral Citations, all of the concerns are easily addressable, particularly the copyright one. One we may need to think about is the designation of oral sources as primary sources, where WP:PRIMARY applies (particularly point 5
Do not base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them.
), and WP:USEPRIMARY. One user said primary sources can't contribute to notability, but there's no mention of that at WP:N. Like you said in your comment above, it's the recognition of elders and oral repositories as respectable and authoritative sources in some communities (not dissimilar to academics) with their own areas of expertise that needs to be stressed. Kowal2701 (talk) 13:55, 4 May 2025 (UTC)- I see some people at meta:Research talk:Oral Citations were under the impression that oral citations violate WP:NOR. This is a misunderstanding, as the editor/interviewer is not conducting their own research, giving their opinion or interpretation, they are simply recording an expert's original research, and translating it to a different medium. Sure, the editor can be seen as the 'publisher', so well-regarded editors will have their oral citations seen as more reliable. And obv it's very easy to cite oral sources, like with written primary sources, in a way that doesn't involve synthesis, commentary, or unsupported conclusions. Kowal2701 (talk) 21:33, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- I see the main concern at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 161#Oral Citations (2) was regarding WP:V and intellectual property rights (the others weren't valid imo, I'm sorry you had to defend it on your own, it must have been very demoralising). Unfortunately I am clueless about copyright, but there's a wealth of research on indigenous intellectual copyright we can consult. There must be a workaround for this.
- Khan 2018 under the heading "II. Creative Commons Licenses and Traditional Knowledge" says that copyleft licences should work well, where people can freely use and distribute the work and its derivatives with some rights reserved for the original owner, and no-one else can claim ownership over it. They say
Recent discussions at the WIPO Intergovernmental Committee (IGC) have sought to create tiers of traditional knowledge to help identify what may be protected and how IP structures may be reconciled with it. They are roughly divided by how ‘public’ the traditional knowledge is. The first tier is ‘secret traditional knowledge.’ Okediji suggests juxtaposing this category with the protection afforded to trade secrets and granting injunctions against unauthorized disclosures. 48 The second tier is ‘closely held traditional knowledge’ that is held by those in leadership positions of communities. This could also fit into the trade secrets protection model depending on how much it has been disseminated.
The third tier is ‘widely disseminated traditional knowledge’, which would only be afforded the protection of attribution. Okediji states that an example would be Yoga, which is widely associated with India, but broadly disseminated. This third tier of traditional knowledge could work well with Creative Commons licenses. However, attribution could be a problem when a particular author can’t be identified, or there is a growing number of authors or too many authors (attribution stacking) by virtue of attribution to a community.
- Garcia et al 2021 says in Spain, they've created an inventory for TEK which is then copyrighted ("Spanish Inventory of Traditional Knowledge related to Biodiversity"). Potentially we could upload the recordings and transcriptions to an external repository and copyright that, and then simply paraphrase on-wiki as you normally would?
- There's likely more options and people we can contact for help with this.
- Khan 2018 under the heading "II. Creative Commons Licenses and Traditional Knowledge" says that copyleft licences should work well, where people can freely use and distribute the work and its derivatives with some rights reserved for the original owner, and no-one else can claim ownership over it. They say
- Kowal2701 (talk) 16:22, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
- Being a knowledge bearer of a community is a role, informally or formally awarded after many decades of participation and service. These are the people that are the community's encyclopaedia, and these are the sources I have in mind to collect verifiable knowledge. "Verifiable" in turn means that another designated knowledge bearers would give roughly the same account, and that ordinary community members would send you to them instead of giving their own opinion. I just have to convince fellow editors that this structure exists, and that it has been working for millennia. --Pgallert (talk) 16:33, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- That's understandable. Knowledge about local phenomena, traditional oral history, TK, and TEK are the obvious ones. Looking at instances where academics conduct oral interviews to gather evidence might be fruitful, such as oral history. Unfortunately, we may have to think more about how this would benefit WP's coverage of, for instance, US-related articles, or parts of the world that don't have strong oral traditions anymore. Biographies maybe, where someone can interview the subject or someone closely related (WP:IS issues though). How would you differentiate between reliable and unreliable people, or would you just attribute when unsure? The biggest universal area of knowledge currently untapped by WP is local, we might do well to list types of local articles, settlements and landmarks are the obvious ones. Local culture as well. That might be a good way to frame this to the community, and make arguments surrounding TK/oral tradition in tandem? Kowal2701 (talk) 00:39, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- From my side his is currently dormant, TBH. Life got in the way of further activism of mine. I think what it needs is more interesting examples of article content that cannot be referenced in any other way. --Pgallert (talk) 16:32, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- That makes sense. Not really my place to ask, it’s of course up to you, but are there plans for the next steps regarding how to progress this? Asking other academics how they would solve this problem? Coordinating with Wikimedia chapters? I think the only way the we get the community on side is by having a developed and actionable proposal (although we can use the village pump idea lab) Kowal2701 (talk) 17:52, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
You see, Kowal2701, things are moving. Not as fast as they could, but steadily. Back in 2010, Achal was the lone voice for oral citations on Wikipedia, and traditional knowledge was in the realm of ethnologists, not epistemologists. In the mean time experiments were conducted, papers were published. I'm sure there comes a time when editors understand that oral knowledge transfer brought us where we are today, is still alive and valid, and must get its rightful place on Wikipedia, too. The sum of all human knowledge, after all, that's the vision.
I'm not entirely sure this time is now. The bigger the fight on Wikipedia, the longer the result stands. I think we're not ready just yet. I have moved aside a bit and do not do much research at the moment. My next big thing is on the ethics of researching indigenous communities, there is much lacking there. But if someone kicks off a new attempt at oral citations, I'll support as much as I can. Cheers, Pgallert (talk) 19:47, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
- I agree that the case for oral citations is only going to get stronger, as it has been over the past decade. I don't expect you to compromise with your vision, and the version of oral citations I have in mind is frankly unambitious, in that I'd fit them into existing policies and compromise with scepticism with the aim of alleviating some of it in the long run. I respect your decision. But we have very few editors from what some anthropologists call "oral cultures", let alone academics, and for this to happen someone needs to drive it. I sincerely hope this is something you pick up again in the future as your expertise is invaluable, and wish you all the best. (I'd love to read anything you publish, that sounds really interesting, I've read that the ethics of historians recording oral traditions has been very poor in that the interviewee/community get nothing in return, other than maybe a few gifts or cash payment, and interpretation is done by an outsider. I imagine emic and etic are central to this.) Kowal2701 (talk) 20:11, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
Hey
[edit]Hey, I just read your tribute at User talk:JarrahTree. A very sad situation indeed. I still fondly remember meeting you at the opening ceremony of Wikimania 2012 in Washington DC ... good to know that you're still editing here. Graham87 (talk) 01:39, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- Hi Graham87! I also remember that meeting, and I am glad you're still around here, too. You are an inspiration to many, not just to me. Cheers, Pgallert (talk) 16:25, 3 May 2025 (UTC)