Biblical Hebrew Forum

["K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

That's funny. In this I mean humerous.

When I tried to be active in Wikipedia, I uploaded an entry based on someone
else's PhD dissertation, which had been translated to English, and in the
translation process the original author expanded on his ideas. But because
he contradicted the majority position du jour among university profs, my
article was rejected. The only "original research" I did was to translate
the author's turgid prose to simple English.

Another time I found a factual error that was verifiable by going back to
the original published source, and even that was rejected as "original
research".

I now have a very jaundiced view of Wikipedia.

I have found other articles in Wikipedia that have not just reported on
published sources, but have taken a definite partisan position on the
subject matter.  In this they violate the very verifiable rule you copied.

Karl W. Randolph.

On 8/7/06, David P Donnelly
> One of the keys to writing good encyclopedia articles is to understand
> that they must refer only to facts, assertions, theories, ideas, claims,
> opinions, and arguments that have already been published by reputable
> publishers.
> The goal of Wikipedia is to become a complete and reliable encyclopedia.
> Editors should cite reliable sources so that their edits may be verified
> by readers and other editors.
> "Verifiability" in this context does not mean that editors are expected
> to verify whether, for example, the contents of a New York Times article
> are true. In fact, editors are strongly discouraged from conducting this
> kind of research, because original research may not be published in
> Wikipedia.
> Articles should contain only material that has been published by reliable
> sources, regardless of whether individual editors view that material as
> true or false.
> The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is thus verifiability, not
> truth.
> >>>
> Wikipedia requires that edits be verifiable. However Wikipedia cannot,
> nor does it attempt to, verify that each edit is true.
> The three statements quoted in the Wikipedia Article:Yahweh, that said
> that  theophoric prefixes or suffixes can be derived from "YaHWeH", had
> been published in reputable sources, and thus met Wikipedia's
> "Verifiability, not truth"  policy.
> Whether or not the three statements quoted were accurate, is a separate
> issue.
> Dave Donnelly