>The trustworthiness of data is a function of its provenance, not its accompanying analysis or commentary.
From an idealistic standpoint, sure. From a real world standpoint, trustworthiness colors peoples' perception of the data itself. Including commentary with the release has lead to Wikileaks being viewed as untrustworthy in many people's eyes, resulting in them dismissing the analysis of data sourced from them outright.
Again, in an ideal world, the data would rule all, but that's simply not the way it actually plays out. It's not hard to find examples of exactly this playing out with Wikileaks, and it lessens the overall value of the data they do release in swaying public perception.
>(I prefer something more like what Nate Silver does).
Nate Silver does meta-analysis. He doesn't perform any data gathering himself. He represents the third-party editorial voice I'm advocating. In fact, Silver's model even further illustrates what I'm getting at because it accounts for and weights the reliability of the sources of the raw data.
From an idealistic standpoint, sure. From a real world standpoint, trustworthiness colors peoples' perception of the data itself. Including commentary with the release has lead to Wikileaks being viewed as untrustworthy in many people's eyes, resulting in them dismissing the analysis of data sourced from them outright.
Again, in an ideal world, the data would rule all, but that's simply not the way it actually plays out. It's not hard to find examples of exactly this playing out with Wikileaks, and it lessens the overall value of the data they do release in swaying public perception.
>(I prefer something more like what Nate Silver does).
Nate Silver does meta-analysis. He doesn't perform any data gathering himself. He represents the third-party editorial voice I'm advocating. In fact, Silver's model even further illustrates what I'm getting at because it accounts for and weights the reliability of the sources of the raw data.