Folks,
Would someone help me here? What is the current policy regarding linking
dates such as Birth and Death in biography articles?
Thanks,
Marc Riddell
Hi all,
The current <ref>...</ref>...<references/> system produces nice
references, but it is flawed--all the text contained in a given
reference appears in the text that the reference is linked from. For
example:
It was a sunny day on Wednesday<ref>David Smith. ''History of Wednesdays.''
History Magazine, 2019.</ref>. The next day, Thursday, was cloudy.
== References and notes ==
<references/>
(That's a very simple example, too. References start to become a lot
larger once they start to include other information and/or are
produced via a template.)
Once way I could conceive of correcting the problem is to have a
reference tag that provides only a _link_ to the note via a label and
another type of reference tag that actually _defines_ and _displays_
the note. For example:
It was a sunny day on Wednesday<ref id="smith"/>. The next day, Thursday,
was cloudy.
== References and notes ==
<reference id="smith">David Smith. ''History of Wednesdays.'' History
Magazine, 2019.</reference>
This makes the raw wikitext easier to read, since the text of the
actual reference is in the _references_ section instead of in the
page's primary content.
I think this could work ...
--Thomas Larsen
At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cool_Wall we had a complete list
of cars which appear on the BBC Top Gear "Cool Wall". I removed this
as being almost certainly a violation of copyright. It is now being
argued that reproducing the list in full does not violate copyright,
because it is not published in the show's magazine or on the website
and has been compiled by collating the lists from numerous shows. It
is further asserted that compiling the list from these shows does not
constitute original research, although there is no known reliable
secondary source for any of the data, let alone the complete collated
list
Original research? You decide.
Copyright? I think so, but what do I know?
Fancruft? Ooooh, tricky :-)
Guidance appreciated.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.ukhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
The other day I noticed an editor replacing multiple references to a website
that has disappeared with {{fact}}, in different articles.
The other day I noticed an editor removing a number of references to a
website, with a "this site is gone" edit summary. The site has indeed left
the building, so to speak, but I'm not sure what the rule is here.
Question for the panel: is it better to just leave the links as is (with a
note that the site does not exist anymore), remove them altogether, or
replace the links with archive.org links?
In these particular instances the links were replaced by {{fact}}, which
is--to my mind--the worst of all options: it makes it look as if there never
were proper sources for the statement, or actually worse: the "citation
needed" make it look as if the statements are somehow controversial. Not to
mention that they now run the risk of being deleted.
(The issue that made me think about this is clouded by the fact that the
editor effectively removing the sources deems the originally referenced site
untrustworthy, but that's beside the larger point, really.)
Michel Vuijlsteke
On Fri, 2008-10-17 at 19:23 +0000, wikien-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org
wrote:
> From: Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com>
> multiple references to a website
> that has disappeared
> Question for the panel: is it better to just leave the links as is
> (with a
> note that the site does not exist anymore), remove them altogether, or
> replace the links with archive.org links?
I, for one, would say that yoy should just do what you would do with
offline sources, there is no reason to treat online sources in a
different way: when you cite a journal it is the reader's responsibility
to go and find it in a library, not yours, as long as you give all
necessary information to locate a copy of the journal if one exists at
all, and if the journal goes out of print and all libraries of the world
somehow decide to burn all copies of that journal then it is still not
your responsibility, as an author or editor.
A dead link is like a book which is out of print. It is hard to find,
but it was published someday, so it is appropriate to cite it as long as
you include the access date (a short quotation would help too).
Your responsibility as an author is to provide proper references that
would enable one to spot the source if copies exist and to provide the
information in a correct manner (eg if the source says "a bit of it"
don't write "lots of it"). For links, as long as you cite the pages for
information that is correct and truthful and you provide proper
citations (URL, access date, etc) then you have done what is expected of
you. Noting that a link is dead or providing a link to a web archiver
is a good thing, too.
There are some systems where you can go and keep a snapshot of a webpage
for future reference. Using them is a good thing, but not necessary:
when you reference a book you don't make a snapshot of it, so you
shouldn't be required to take snapshots of webpages just because
webpages may go dead (books can be burned or become out of print, too).
However, do note that placing citations to dead webpages, or to live
webpages that soon afterwards go dead, is a way to commit undetectable
vandalism. There is no easy solution against this, unless one is
willing to not include any dead links.
Furthermore, the responsibilities of the author have to be balanced with
the rights of the reader: the reader has a right to be able to check
your work for accuracy, and citations are supposed to satisfy that
right, but with the web this system appears to be broken now (with books
and journals it was very unlikely for a paper source to disappear from
all over the world and from all libraries at once), so one could say
that dead links do not appear to be very useful for readers,
particularly those not familiar with citation systems. While the author
has a responsibility to provide sources and assist one in finding them
by providing proper publication and access dates or other information,
they are not responsible for actually keeping a copy of them or of
actually finding them themselves after an article is written, but the
reader has a right to be able to check the author's accuracy and
therefore the volatility of the web appears to be a diservice to
readers.
Perhaps the best solution would be to build a web archiving platform in
Wikipedia itself, so that all referenced webpages are stored for later
retrieval.
--
Thanks,
NSK Nikolaos S. Karastathis, http://nsk.karastathis.org/
Grawp has been a problem for a very long time and not only on the
english wikipedia but on every single wikimedia wiki as well as about
200 other wikis and wikia and even though most of his edits were just
page moves with links to shocksites, but quite recently within the
last 6 month, he has started to randomly attack users both on their
sex and religion and quite recently he has stoop so low as to attack
the users family members and children which is most definitely the
nail to the coffin. This has gone far enough and since the mother does
not want to take matters to her own hands, we may have to take this
one step further and go to the feds because internet bullying and
harassment is a CRIME and its about time he paid the price..we have
had enough !!
--
Cometstyles
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I do want to thank everyone who gave input for my BLP question, and a
special nod to Angela who pointed out the archives. I should have
read those first.
Here is a second issue I would like to discuss, if the group is inclined.
Speedy deletion nominations, I would propose there be a paradigm shift
from our current thinking of "Tag immediately and template the user
talk *right after* creation to something like "don't tag untill an
hour has passed". I believe this will be less bity and more
encouraging to our users. To quote something I observed today from
one good editor in reference to our jest over speedy deletions:
"Welcome to wikipedia. You didn't create a good enough article in
your allotted 60 seconds so we deleted it. Dont forget to sign your
posts!"
Even though it was in jest, it is true.
I think perhaps it is time we consider enacting (onwiki discussion to
follow if this is well received) something of a one hour rule to
tagging and templating. We've grown so...
...automated.
Thoughts?
Best,
Jon
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There's recently been a change to the naming disambiguation guideline.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conflict#Common_subsets_versu…
I'm interested in whether that is considered a good idea or not.
For example the term 'internal combustion engine' usually refers to
piston engines and wankel engines, but the term technically actually
covers gas turbines and jet engines as well, in a less common sense.
This is actually the way the Encyclopedia Britannica defines the term,
it defines it in the most general sense. If you try to define the
everyday sense you end up with an arbitrary definition that is
difficult to defend, it's this or that only. Presumably that's why the
EB does it the general way.
Another example is jet engine, again, it normally covers turbojets and
turbofans, but also ramjets, and in the most general (less common
sense) it covers rockets and water jet powered boats. That's the way
the jet engine article currently goes.
The term 'aircraft engine' very often refers to, in aviation usage,
just piston engines and Wankel engines used for aircraft, but not to
jet engines, however it's easy to find jet engine manufacturers that
refer to their jet engines as 'aircraft engines' as well, and the term
would lead you to expect it to be more general than just piston
engines.
The same discussion has in the last two weeks or so recently cropped
up in 'glider'. A lot of people use the term to refer to what can be
termed sailplanes, and some don't even really consider, for example,
'hang gliders' to be gliders. I agree that people will usually imagine
a sailplane when they are asked what a glider is, but I find that they
will also usually agree that other things are gliders also.
I'm not sure there's a right or a wrong exactly, but the wikipedia is
probably a general publication and therefore, it seems to me, gets
forced in a lot of cases to use general terms, (and this is the catch)
even if they're somewhat less common, because the general term is
synonymous with the specific term but a superset and usually easier to
define.
I'm just wondering what people here think about this issue in general
and the ongoing 'glider' one in particular. Is 'glider' more or less
anything/an aircraft that glides, or is it specifically a (for want of
a better name) a sailplane.
(FWIW if you want to see how 'glider' used to be see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Unpowered_aircraft&oldid=256711991
I'm not convinced I understand what that version is doing there
specifically, but that's where it currently is.)
--
-Ian Woollard
We live in an imperfectly imperfect world. Life in a perfectly
imperfect world would be very much better.