Please move past the idea that my arguments go beyond the scope of the original article. I already agreed in principle to it (and with you) on the point of allowing the publication of papers outside the journals generally. That is no longer at issue in my posts. My issue is with opening them for editing on Wikipedia and other open-authoring sites specifically.

Nowhere in any of my posts did I suggest that scientific research should not be open to discussion or public review. I stated repeatedly that it should be. What I stated (also repeatedly) is that the content should not be editable which is entirely different than making it open for discussion. Allowing the editing of research findings (i.e., modifying or changing them) does not advance knowledge. It confuses it.

Let’s say that I post research on Wikipedia stating that cars with bumper stickers on them are “67% more likely” to suffer rear-end collisions. Someone sees that and disagrees with the findings. Maybe that person thinks my sample was too small or my tests were faulty or that I didn’t have enough fingers and toes to count up the results properly. Is it better for that person to edit my text to read “67% less likely” or to respond to my findings or start a discussion about them?

I do not argue against the wiki concept and, in fact, have considered implementing it at my job for user documentation. But neither do I suggest that, because it is good for some applications, it is necessarily good for every application.

Now, to the specific points in your previous post:

This is based on faulty reasoning.

No. It’s called a difference of opinion.

1. It’s based on the idea that someone would put up information on Wikipedia as being the definitive source. No one is claiming that.

2. It’s based on the idea that they’re putting up the full content there rather than publishing it in a peer reviewed uneditable journal. No one is claiming that.

Neither am I. I never stated it nor did I infer it.

3. It’s based on the idea that you shouldn’t put research findings on a site like Wikipedia because it would be editable.

Precisely. Findings are what they are: one author’s conclusions to a study. If someone else comes to a different conclusion, the way to handle that is to post a response or start a discussion about it, not edit the contents. How can you even discuss the original findings on the site if someone edited them?

That’s an argument against the entire concept of Wikipedia.

Arguing that scientific research papers are not appropriate content for wikis means precisely that I believe scientific research papers are not approprtiate for wikis. Nothing more. Nothing less.

You really think it’s better that this information be kept entirely off Wikipedia than putting it there where a discussion can take place about it?

I never stated that it shouldn’t be open to discussion only that it shouldn’t be open to editing. You cannot have a valid discussion if the starting point keeps changing. The fact that the paper may or may not be published elsewhere is not relevant. It is published there and being discussed there so the baseline for the discussion there should not change.