Talk:Social change/Archive 1

previous discussion

I created a page for social change, in the specialized areas. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Change Anyone mind if I take out social change in the 'see other' section? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gsociology (talk • contribs). 27 April, 2004.

I'd rather prefer that you didn't. I need this. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 130.126.161.24 (talk • contribs). 2 March, 2006.

I'd like to edit the social change page and have questions

I would like to make some changes, on this page and as a background, am providing the following information.

1. In the external links section, this link doesn't work "Social Continuity and Change, and Social Theory" The link for the organization is this http://www.ptc.nsw.edu.au/scansw/ but they appear to have a lot of non working links.

2. I would like to add content about social change, and revise the theory, example and measurement. I would like to use content from our reports, listed here, http://gsociology.icaap.org/reports.html

I believe that the first paragraph in the examples section and the 'measuring social change' are pretty much from our reports. (I think I put these on wikipedia).

3. Regarding 'verifiability', all of our reports include links to the original data where anyone can check for themselves that our reports are accurate. In addition, most of our reports link to other reports from major organizations that say pretty much the same thing.

4. Regarding whether we are 'reliable'. I believe that our reports are pretty well accepted as legitimate, reliable and useful, even though they are mostly not in peer reviewed journals. Some of the sites that link to our reports include those listed on our page listing sites that link to us: http://gsociology.icaap.org/these.html

and include these

Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline

Development Gateway, http://topics.developmentgateway.org/culture/rc/ItemDetail.do%7E345214 and http://topics.developmentgateway.org/poverty/rc/ItemDetail.do?itemId=1089198. I contributed these, but they accepted my contributions.

UK's Government Social Research unit, http://www.gsr.gov.uk/resources/websites.asp

UK's Policy Hub, http://www.policyhub.gov.uk/evidence_hotlinks/international_evidence/worldwide.asp

The University of Chicago's Model United Nations WHO committee (topic B), http://munuc.uchicago.edu/committees/WHO

UK's Intute, http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/cgi-bin/fullrecord.pl?handle=sosig969434572-20247

Eldis, http://www.eldis.org/static/DOC13417.htm

Intute, http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/cgi-bin/fullrecord.pl?handle=sosig1047658481-8611

5. We have published articles describing or discussing most of the data we would use. I have described most of the data in various International Statistical Institute Newsletters, see this for a list http://gsociology.icaap.org/report/whoare.html and have also discussed the the data and their usage in a Social Research Update issue, see http://sru.soc.surrey.ac.uk/SRU47.html

Would it be all right if I were to add information to the Wikipedia page on social change? Or would anyone else like to use some information from our reports to add information? If folks want to see this page develop, I am willing.

Could someone please respond to this?

thanks

gene

gsociology 00:26, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

If you can edit within the spirit of the conflict of interest guidelines then it would be great to have you work on the article. I have some concerns about your recent edits, in particular:

• You appeared to only use links to your own website in your editing. If you are writing information on your website based on sources you should be able to use those sources in your work here.
• You recently added a definition for social change that appeared to come straight from a page on your website which, though written in the style of an academic paper did not appear to have been published in a peer reviewed journal. As well as concerns about the appropriateness of such a definition, it was added along with the words "(copied with permission)" which is not appropriate for Wikipedia. We publish under the GFDL (with occasional fair use when it's absolutely necessary) - additional comments like this imply the GFDL is not applicable to the paragraph. If you are going to use wording directly from your website, it needs to be released under the GFDL.
• I am concerned about the use of reports from your website as sources rather than citing peer reviewed papers or some other source that has more checks and balances. You used a link to a webpage listing many reports as a source for the "examples" sections. Such a page does not provide proper back up for the examples section, citations ought to be specific, and again, these reports do not appear to be from peer reviewed journals, making their appropriateness as reliable sources questionable. It would probably be better to use the sources you relied on to write the appropriate reports.

Altogether these give the impression that you are here mainly as the voice of your website rather than as someone trying to build up this encyclopedia in a more neutral manner. If you can edit from a different perspective, having some actual expertise on the article would, I think, be great.

I'm sorry others haven't commented. I thought there were a few other editors that watched this page. I'll ask for comments at the conflict of interest noticeboard, if you think there's another place on Wikipedia we might get the attention of more expert editors it might be good to post there as well. -- Siobhan Hansa 11:00, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree that this article needs reliable sources. Links to gsociology.icaap.org should probably be excluded under WP:EL, 'Links normally to be avoided', #11: Links to blogs and personal web pages, except those written by a recognized authority. If Gene Shackman or any of his colleagues have written peer-reviewed papers that are relevant to the article topic, then they should be considered.

Wikipedia is not intended to be a directory of links, or a bibliography. See WP:NOT. References are a slightly different matter, because they are used to justify specific claims that are made here, and the reader need not follow the link to be informed. Our readers can easily leave Wikipedia and use Google if they want to find out what web resources are available on a topic. EdJohnston 15:47, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

sources, peer reviewed

The sources for much of the information are from reports by organizations like the UN, World Bank, US Census Bureau, CIA World Factbook, WHO and other related organizations, or directly from their data tables. None of sources are from articles in peer reviewed journals. This is because basic information about social change is generally not research. So for example, basic population trends are not research papers, but are often given in reports by organizations, not peer reviewed reports. Similarly, tables showing overall freedom and conflict throughout the world are generally presented in reports, not in peer reviewed journals.

There is peer reviewed research about, for example, the relationship between freedom and economic growth, causes of growth, and so forth. But those are advanced topics. The basic tables showing grwoth by region, freedom by country, etc, are generally not presented in peer reviewed journal articles.

In addition, while many may consider organizations like the UN or the world bank to be mainstream organizations, there are also many who criticize those organizations. For example, the Institute of Social Analysis, http://www.columbia.edu/%7Esr793/, is critical of how the World Bank measures poverty. Their paper about it is on their web site, not in a peer reviewed journal, but on the other hand, they describe themseleves as "We are a global voluntary association that was originally established by scholars at Columbia University", and Columbia University is surely a respected university.

So, an article describing the basic trends on social change would need to rely on reports published by organizations, not on peer reviewed journal articles. What is the policy on that?

gsociology 20:28, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

If we're quoting that kind of data then we should be referencing the institute that publishes it. But I believe you're not simply doing that. You're using your own analysis of that data and how it relates to social change, and so that analysis should be from some form of publication that has a degree of rigor in its publication process. This doesn't necessarily mean a peer reviewed journal (though they tend to be preferred), but it does mean there needs to be more than your own website. I'm aware there are different ways of measuring, and thinking about, poverty. And there are even more ways of thinking about social change. Wikipedia's standards are to provide a neutral point of view, which normally means providing the significant points of view of experts in the field with appropriate weight (i.e. a minority, but significant point of view gets less space than one that is more widely held, but it's still there) and to make it clear who holds each position. It does not, however, mean that everyone who has ever written on a subject is entitled to have their views represented. -- Siobhan Hansa 22:48, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I came late to this. I was cruising wikipedia and noticed that a lot of the entry for social change seems to be from the reports by Shackman, Liu and Wang. So I added those referneces. The social change project by shackman, liu and wang seems to be pretty reputable so seems to be a good sources for references.

thanks Pjscience 19:00, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Removing link

the history page http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Social_change&action=history says "Athaenara (Talk | contribs) (6,065 bytes) (Removed gsociology.icaap.org linkspam repeatedly added by site owner user Gsociology = 64.185.138.185 = 64.185.138.154 in April 2007.)"

I don't know if you have any way of checking, but I was not the person who added the link this last time. So please put it back. I hope you can check the ip address of the person who added the link, compared to my ip address, and see that its different.

thanks

gene —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gsociology (talk • contribs) 25 April 2007.

Gene, our convention is that any new comments should be added at the bottom of the Talk page. Remember to sign your posts using four tildes, which will expand into your name and the date. As you mention, someone other than yourself seems to have re-added the link to gsociology.icaap.org. If that other person had read the Talk page before doing that, they would have perceived that there is no consensus here to add the link, gsociology.icaap.org. That may be a useful web site for the people who go there, but does not meet the Wikipedia definition for a reliable source, as discussed at WP:RS. (Except in unusual cases, all our article references have to be reliable sources). However, the IP address that re-added the link was based in Albany, NY so maybe it's a fan of yours. :-) EdJohnston 22:17, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, I recently read some of this discussion, about 'reliable source', and as far as I can tell, the social change reports meet those criteria. Gene posted above that his reports are cited in a number of respectible places, like the UK government (Policy Hub, Government Social Research Unit) and also I see are listed by American Sociological Association, the Development Gateway, Johns Hopkins Pop Reporter.

In addition, Dr Shackman, the manager of the social change project, has had his work published in newsletters of the International Statistical Institute, and book reviews in various journals, and the social change people also had an article published by the Social Research Update. This certainly meets this criteria of reliable source defined by wikipedia "These may be acceptable so long as their work has been previously published by reliable third-party publications."

Also, the reports by the social change project cite plenty of other reliable sources that are directly related, and follows those sources, so also meets this wikipedia criteria "the only way to demonstrate that you are not presenting original research is to cite reliable sources that provide information directly related to the topic of the article, and to adhere to what those sources say."

In short, so far as I can tell, and I believe any reasonable person would believe, the reports on the social change site certainly seem reliable and worthy of citation on wikipedia.

Pjscience 20:22, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

The web site gsociology.icaap.org is still not a peer-reviewed journal, so it is still not suitable as an article reference. This issue has been discussed before. Please do not re-insert links against consensus. It seems that you are a new contributor to Wikipedia, so please review WP:POLICY and the documents that are linked from there. EdJohnston 05:21, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Not peer reviewed, thanks for the info. Let me see if I can help out. I noticed that the only other citation on this page is from the Tellus Institute, and as far as I can tell, this is not peer reviewed either, not a journal, not an academic institute, so I'll follow your guideline and remove it. I think I saw several other non peer reviewed citations on other pages so I'll remove them too.

Thanks again for clarifying.

Pjscience 17:23, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

And actually looking at the entry citing the Tellus source, it seems like a pretty odd entry, about the planetary stage. So I'll just take that out.

But I don't understand why Dr. Shackman's social change site isn't listed in one of the external links. If you google social change, it is the second entry, so clearly it is a highly referenced site, and looking at it, it has tons of information all about social change. As far as I can tell, if you want to know about social change, especially if you a non technical person, Dr. Shackman's site is the best place to start.

Pjscience 17:27, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

It isn't listed because though it appears to have a heavy net presence it also appears to be a self-published site by someone who does not seem to be a particularly well recognized authority in the field. It has also been heavily spammed on this site by its owner and anonymous IP addresses and has not been suggested by any editor with a track record of non-conflict of interest related edits. This is a big concern from the perspective of our neutral point of view policy. -- SiobhanHansa 19:35, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Adequacy of the references

Someone just removed the tag that was calling for references. I'll admit that references exist, though the selection appears limited. A more serious concern is that there are no inline citations, so it's not possible to know which claims (if any) are supported by which books. The text also includes weasel-wording, like It is claimed that a primary agent of social change is technological advancement.. but without saying who is making the anonymous claim.

The wikilink known as Important publications in social change goes to an empty section. (That wikilink should probably be removed; otherwise it suggests there are *no* important publications in social change).

In my view the article deserves a {{refimprove}} tag but I'll hold off adding that, to give the person who removed the reference tag a chance to respond or to improve the article. EdJohnston (talk) 05:34, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

There wasn't any citations or referecnes for the 'theory' part, and in fact no references for any of whats on this page, so most should be deleted, according to the guidelines of wikipedia, saying that everything should be backed up or referenced by peer reviewed journal articles. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.23.128.171 (talk) 05:58, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

added reference to peer reviewed journal

Please note that the shackman, liu and wang reference (2005) is to a peer reviewed journal, Social Research Update. In fact, this is the only peer reviewed reference on this page, and in much of the social science pages. If you delete this, you also have to delete a lot of the references in wikipedia that are not to peer reviewed journals. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.47.169.2 (talk) 00:51, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

no citations to anything on this page

there aren't any citations to anything written on this page, so according to wikipedia guidelines, really everything should be deleted, or you should ask some recognized authority to contribute something, WITH citations. If you want people to believe anything on this page, there should be at least some citations. Some of the "theories" which had been on the page were totally bogus, not theories that anyone uses in any scholarly publications or settings. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.244.124.227 (talk) 21:18, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

== gtrfg 174.131.183.40 (talk) 13:15, 29 October 2009 (UTC)i agree with the defintion but can u explain it more. Thanks J

Social Change

With specific example, examine the impact of Globalization on the economy of Country of your choice. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.201.34.165 (talk) 15:32, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Moving material and reducing everything

It was noted some time ago that the content of the article could be merged with sociocultural evolution or social progress. Perhaps 'social change' can stay as something distinct, but there is a lot of own-work and random waffle here. I shall therefore reduce it and place some direction towards the other relevant articles.

I can't stand to see meaningless sociological statements like "Social change is a present phenomena in every society" ... mediocre students state those sorts of truisms all the time and it gives the discipline a bad name.--Tomsega (talk) 02:33, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Sources for social change wiki page

I see that this entry on social change is very short. There is a lot of stuff on the web that could be used as reference though. Someone once referenced the social change reports http://gsociology.icaap.org/reports.html These seem like good reference but apparently there was some objections. I don't see the problem. I notice that they are cited by more than 30 scholarly books and peer review journals. http://gsociology.icaap.org/these.html The authors also have a number of reports at the Wikeprogress site http://www.wikiprogress.org/index.php/Global_Social_Change_Research_Project and also have an impressive data set on the wikiprogress data site http://stats.wikiprogress.org//index.aspx (see 'combined data set' then 'is life getting better') Surely these reports are now accepted as known standards, commonly accepted, and useful as wikipedia sources, and the authors are accepted as experts. Right? Citingsources (talk) 02:50, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Rrajpoot removed a lot of text

just wondering, i saw that rrajpoot removed a whole lot of text around 19 august. Any particular reason? was something wrong with that stuff? thanks Citingsources (talk) 03:50, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Political change

I am redirecting this term here, as the base article was deleted (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Political change (2nd nomination)). Perhaps it can be developed here in a subsection? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me} 17:27, 29 May 2012 (UTC)