finiki talk:Editing guidelines

Opening a can of worms!
I’d like to discuss the Neutral point of view policy and the No original research policy. They certainly make sense for an encyclopaedia such as Wikipedia. I’m not sure they are ideal for a knowledge base such as finiki.

Let’s start with NPOV. Here is a point of view: actively managed mutual funds are “better” than passively managed ones because the highly trained fund manager professionally selects the “best” stocks; MERs are not that important. Give me half an hour and I can probably find half a dozen online “sources” to support this POV or variations on it. These sources may come from writers who have something to gain by promoting this POV, but they are “sources” nonetheless. Should this POV be given equal weight to the opposite POV, i.e. “costs matter”, in order to attain perfect neutrality? Would we be serving Canadian DIY investors if the did this?

Now for “no original research”. According to Wikipedia, this means “material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published sources exist”. If we take this literally, then the statement “Based on their yearly total returns over the period 2005-2014, the FTSE Canada All Cap Index and the S&P/TSX Capped Composite Index are perfectly correlated (coefficient of correlation of 0.999) and have the same annualized return (7.6%)”, on the index page, constitutes original research. I don’t know any published sources that say exactly this. But the raw data (the yearly returns of both indices over the last 10 years) is public. So anyone can verify the statement by freely obtaining the raw data, copying it in a spreadsheet, and calculating the Pearson correlation coefficient, the coefficient of determination (R2) and the annualized returns. It’s original research, but it’s verifiable. I reckon that such verifiable statements, even if they have no published sources, add value to finiki. Suppose an investor reads about an ETF tracking the FTSE Canada All Cap Index, instead of the better known S&P/TSX Composite. Should the different index be a worry? Based on the near perfect correlation and identical 10 year annualized returns between the two indices, I’d say the different index is not a problem in this particular case (because it’s not that different…). In the ideal world investors would individually conduct perfect due diligence before buying something. But if someone else has already done the analysis, wouldn’t it be great to read about it on finiki? Of course, accepting verifiable original research on finiki would mean that it would have to be peer-reviewed, but we’re already doing this within the editor group, and posting ideas on the forum when there is something we are unsure about.

OK, the can of worms is open! --Quebec 07:22, 23 January 2015 (MST)
 * Good questions. To gain wider visibility and discussion I've copied this into the finiki lounge discussion forum. Let's continue there, at least for now.--Peculiar Investor 09:46, 23 January 2015 (MST)
 * How about adding a few words to the "Neutral point of view" section, for example something like "finiki should be written for DIY investors, from a DIY investor point of view"? --Quebec 14:15, 16 March 2015 (MDT)
 * I was going to, but look at the objectives on the FWF home page (the blog, not the forum) as well as the Main Page. I don't think you want to exclude investors who need professional guidance. --LadyGeek 18:40, 16 March 2015 (MDT)
 * I agree that investors who need professional guidance should not be excluded, of course. The idea is to still use wikipedia's NPOV overall, but say that finiki is written from a Canadian individual investor's POV, not from the industry's POV. --Quebec 16:33, 17 March 2015 (MDT)
 * How about this:

From:

One key difference, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, finiki is not. finiki is a knowledge base of financial subjects written from a Canadian perspective. finiki is a collaborative work that is primarily based on knowledge built up in Financial Wisdom Forum (FWF) discussions, and is presented in an easy-to-navigate and searchable format.

To:

There is one key difference. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, but finiki is not. finiki is a collaborative work that utilizes the knowledge of the individual investors in the Financial Wisdom Forum (FWF) from a Canadian perspective, and is presented in an easy-to-navigate and searchable format.

--LadyGeek 17:27, 17 March 2015 (MDT)

Proposed paragraph utilized in the article. --Quebec 17:22, 26 March 2015 (MDT)

The full discussion can be found in: Policy: editorial guidelines (Only visible to finiki editors) --LadyGeek 12:45, 4 April 2015 (MDT)