User:V 0 1 D/Draft:Weak Articles

Preface

There are numerous articles proposing pen spinning information. Much of these are in the form of blogs, forum posts, conversations or rumors. The trustworthiness of these sources is currently very low and they are almost never peer-reviewed. Articles frequently push opinions and the author's view, with many failing to qualify claims, reference existing work or explain their conclusions. Worse still these sources are continually pushed and shown to newer spinners who will go on to repeat it without understanding.

Our goals regarding articles should be the following:

1. To provide the most accurate, qualified and well-explained information.
2. To bear responsibility on the accuracy of information when sharing it.
3. To review and challenge articles to determine their accuracy, and provide room for it to be improved.

Information is accurate when it reflects current understanding faithfully, including new expansions to our current understanding. It is qualified when the statements made are led into by prior facts and causes. It is well-explained when it does not require drafting a personal theory to lead the causes to the conclusions.

Here we assume that these traits are beneficial to improving our approach to articles.

Assume little

Some assumptions need to be made to make any meaningful article. We usually assume that a person exists, has a hand with 4 fingers and 1 thumb, and possesses an instrument equivalent to what we consider to be a pen. However, there are also unreasonable assumptions that turn up in articles, and weak propositions claimed as fact. Typically these are used as pillars for a conclusion and make the reliability of the article dubious.

Example: "What's The Big Deal With Density?" by Nine53

This article provides multiple good examples of unreasonable assumptions, with claims made that are not explained or qualified:

• The better you are at tech, the more difficult it is to find unique and interesting material. This sounds paradoxical considering tech is all about the exploration and application of material with learning new tricks and links being just an inherent aspect, but what happens is that with every incremental increase in your skill, the standard for each link and combo increases just as much if not more.
  • Is this really the case for all or even most strong tech spinners? Would you adjust your definition of tech to exclude those that don't meet this assumption?
  • Assumption appears to be author's opinion and their personal approach, rather than a rule for spinning.

• This is not to say that it's too difficult to find new tricks, but rather it's nearly impossible to find tricks that have wide application and are coherent with people's vision.
  • A claim that Fel2Fram created at most 12 tricks at his peak is provided to support the claim. Including modifiers and transformations the number would be far greater than 12, and it would not be sufficient to provide one spinner as the example, despite their reputation.
  • The wide application and individual vision requirement is left intentionally vague.
  • The key premise is similar to claims from individuals such as S777 who had claimed that few new tricks would be discovered. It has the same folly: How can you know whether there are only a few new tricks left to appear, or tens of thousands? It is not so trivial.

• Where the difficulty of basic linking can be formularized to [(diff. of trick A) + (diff. of trick B)] * 1.2, the difficulty of hybrids is more so akin to [(diff. of trick A) + (diff. of trick b)]^2.
  • Perhaps the most audacious, difficulty is assumed into a points scale, and then formulas are made up without qualification to support the author's opinion. The formulas ought be discarded outright as fiction.
  • It is also possible to concretely reject this by providing counterexamples to the inflexible rule.

• To oversimplify things, continuous tech progression essentially boils down to maximizing density (average concentration of hybrids) in order to maximize difficulty at any given level. Although it's very possible to create new and difficult combos without density, it is impossible to continuously improve while avoiding it as 1: you'll run out of tricks and 2: basic linking is limited in mechanics
  • Builds upon prior unreasonable assumptions.
  • Is later contradicted by the footnote mentioning adding 'brute' as an alternative category omitted elsewhere from the discussion due to the author's opinion.
  • Even if prior assumptions held, the omitted category prevents assuming that density is a requirement.

Share responsibly

Articles and information is often shared based on popularity. The famous rumor of "Beginners should spin light mods" was perpetuated by famous pen spinning youtubers Ktrinh93 and Pen Stock, as well as the community as a whole. False information persists until it is dispelled through active effort, and it is much easier to spread fake information than correct it. If false information is spread by a source that is popular enough, or considered reputable enough, it could be impossible to dispel the myths entirely, and they may perpetuate as long as that individual persists in the community.

Individuals should take care to spread information that they know to be true, and to take responsibility for what they are sharing as if they had written it themselves. A current trend is for 'parrots' to repeat information from a single source to all available recipients, with little to no backlash if it turns out to not be true. Often these sources are more interested in pushing narratives than sharing accurate information, which can be dangerous.

What is meant by 'dangerous' is the added work required to correct misinformation.

Encourage Better Articles

Some articles show promise, but still have inaccuracies or make unreasonable assumptions. This does not mean the article has to be thrown away, for the ideas and reasoning contained within could be adjusted towards a stronger, more impactful article that goes to greater depth. The attitudes towards authors of weak articles should be to encourage them to improve and challenge their own ideas, not tear down their productivity that could be redirected towards the greater good.