Michael Snow wrote:
SJ wrote:
When you
talk about "cite sources" never ever put it into
connection to people editing and adding contents - it must be seen
as something separate - many people are not able to "separate"
things themselves they will combine and make something different
out of all this.
What does this mean? How can citations be separate from adding
content?
Only the person adding a fact actually knows where it came from;
other people can do nothing but guess.
Why does it matter where it came from? Except in cases where you're
dealing with a primary source and it's essential to check the
original, the choice of sources is just as subject to editing as the
content. If I add content and cite a pathetically bad source, the
source does not need to stay in the article even if it happens to be
right (if it happens to be wrong and represents a significant point
of view might be another matter). Other people can find other and
often better sources even if they're unable to determine what the
initial source was, and if the case involves a primary source then
the information inherently points to where you need to look.
Many people don't seem to understand this and think there's some kind
of rule that once a source has been used in the writing of an
article, it must be cited or preserved in a References section for
all time. Even normal scholarly practice doesn't require this (else
probably most Wikipedia articles would need to cite other Wikipedia
articles as references), and we in particular should be able to get
past such limited ways of thinking. One of the virtues of our
collaborative system is that there is very little need to try and
divine the intent of an original author, and we needn't be beholden
to that person in terms of choosing sources either.
On the contrary, any published books, such as.... Encyclopaedia
Britannica, has every single one of the its facts checked against each
individual source. This is a requirement of the publisher, and of the
company. They don't make their sources public, so we have to trust
them, but because they have checked each fact, it is usually alright
to trust them. We, on the other hand, by default are accepting new
information without any sources.
Perhaps I wasn't quite clear. I was addressing the separability of
citations from content, but I wasn't suggesting removing source
citations unless you're replacing them with better sources.
--Michael Snow