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POP_GOES_THE_WEASEL
February 9, 2010
August 17, 2013
This is about my adventures with
the Weasel Words "guideline" up
at Wikipedia.
The idea behind this
guideline is to forbid
any form of vague Many things bugged me about
attribution (which it this guideline. I started out
labels "weaseling") trying to find ways to improve
and insist that every it, but those were instantly
single point be and unceremoniously reverted.
precisely referenced. I then fell back to talking it
over on the Talk page off and
The statement "Shakespere on for years... this went
is widely regarded as the absolutely nowhere.
greatest writer of the
English language" is No one who wasn't already
actually a fact undisputed a true believer would hang
by anyone familiar with around on that Talk page.
English literature, but in Trying to talk to them was
wikipedia land it is pointless.
assumed to be some sort of
dodge, an attempt at But if you are a
puffing up that Shakespere flag-waving wikipedian,
guy. "Widely regarded?" this is simply evidence
Widely regarded by who? that there was something
Why not just say it? What wrong with my arguments.
are you trying to pull?
It can't possibly be that
there's something broken
about the social process
of wikipedia...
I wanted to soften the principle
from "don't use weasel words" to
something like "be cautious with
mass attribution".
The opposition was dug in
pretty strongly, insisting on
their right to accuse people of
weaseling.
(This is not a contradiction of the
wikipedia politeness rules because,
uh, I forget.)
There's an interesting thing
about this particular dispute:
the stakes are so small.
If I were editing a political
page, and I found people this So, this is a good
tightly dug in and resistant to reminder to myself And for you the
compromise I would assume I'd to tone down the reader, this
stumbled into a nest of hired paranoia a bit. is a good
political flacks. Some people will reminder that
defend an I can expend
indefensible infinite amounts
BEASTIARY position to the of verbiage
death just because discussing the
it's their position. tiniest, most
trivial subjects
imagineable.
Why you would
need such a
reminder, I
could not say.
Anyway... I've got a bunch of material
on this fascinating subject.
Here's one of my attempts at picking
over a version of the article,
sentence-by-sentence:
"Weasel words are phrases that are evasive, ambiguous
or misleading. On Wikipedia, the term refers to
evasive, ambiguous or misleading attribution."
(1) This is an admission that this guideline The common phrase
is using a non-standard definition. "weasel words"
does not mean
(2) This description does not match what the what this guideline
article actually talks about. This phrase: uses it to mean.
"_War and Peace_ is widely regarded A nice slight of
as Tolstoy's greatest novel." hand: can I use
"bullshit" as a
Is neither evasive, ambiguous, or technical term
misleading. Actually it is a fact. meaning the
arguments from
As with all facts, there might be the esteemed
some question about whether (or opposition?
how badly) it needs a citation.
"Weasel words can present an apparent force of
authority seemingly supporting statements
without allowing the reader to decide whether
the source of the opinion is reliable,"
Or they can be used to make statements of fact
about the general state of human opinons.
"or they can call into question a statement."
I don't follow why this is tacked on to
the above sentence.
"If a statement cannot stand without weasel words,
it does not express a neutral point of view;"
This is wrong. Sometimes they're required to
express a neutral point of view. "Gary Snyder
is a beat poet" is an opinion, "Many people
regard Gary Snyder as a beat poet" is a fact.
"either a source for the statement should be found,
or the statement should be removed."
This empowers the ignorant to demand additional
busywork of the people writing articles-- going
out of your way to support a statment like that
"War and Peace" example is pointless, and no one
would demand that you do this, unless they'd
read this guideline and concluded you should
never use the Forbidden Phrases.
We don't provide citations for everything, with
cite things that "are challenged or are likely to
be challenged".
"If, on the other hand, a statement can stand
without such words, their inclusion may undermine
its neutrality, and the statement will generally
be better off without them."
Many statments can not stand without either these phrases,
or some pointless circumlocution.
These two statements are logically equivalent:
"Many people regard 'beatnik'
as a pejorative term"
"The term 'beatnik' has some
pejorative connotations",
This second one skates by this
guideline, but the first attracts
"weasel words" warnings.
The Weasel Words guideline is a pure
invention of the Wikipedia world,
it has no parallel in any other
style guide... hence it is not a
huge surprise that it got so much wrong.
The main problem appears to be a certain arrogance
among computer jocks: they're often people who
think they can make everything hard-edged and TECHIES_FALLACY
precisely defined. If those fuzzy studies people
haven't pulled it off over the past few centuries,
it's just because they're lightweights guilty of
loose thinking. Now the php-nerds are here to
show those phds how it's done.
It seemed to me was that one trouble here was
that it was trying to put words on trial: it
was outlawing an idiom, when the real target
was the attitude of the people writing.
I tried re-phasing this as
advice for writers, One of the excuses for
something like this: reverting this is that your
supposed to refer to
You feel the need to say wikipedia contributors as
something like "This is the "editors" not writers.
greatest band, ever!" Then
you may stop, and realize WIKI_JARGON
you're not really supposed to
say things like that on
wikipedia, so you revise it:
"Many people regard this band
as the greatest band ever".
Now there are some bands for
which that statement is quite
true, but for many of them
it's an exaggeration at best,
and if you've written
something like that it could
be you should be asking
yourself some questions:
* Am I just trying to disguise personal opinion?
* Is someone going to demand that I support this?
Could I find references for this if I had to?
(and if so, why not just do it?)
* Can I re-write this in terms that are easier to support
(sales figures, numbers of performances, etc)?
There's a relatively subtle problem
I've alluded to above: many people
try to copy edit without knowledge, The "weasel words" guideline is
just using their nose to smell out that it empowers people to attack
weak sentences. an idiom, without any knowledge of
the subject that's supposed to be
the subject at hand.
An example I like:
"The three most prominent works
of Beat literature are--"
That's actually the right way to phrase
it. There really and truly are three, "On the Road",
and if you're familiar with the subject "Howl" and
you wouldn't dispute that. "Naked Lunch"
People who don't know anything
about Beat literature, tend to assume
this needs to be softened:
"Among the most prominent
works of Beat literature are--" A virtue of the
strong form is
That's not wrong, except that the stronger that it repels
form is better when it's not wrong. additional examples.
Wikipedia writing
But good luck finding a reference often suffers from
that says this explicitly. what I think of
No one bothers to establish things as "appendicitis".
that are stunningly obvious.
If you know some
detail that's not
included, you go
looking for some
place to tack it on.
A list of examples
will tend to grow
without bound.
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