Ray Saintonge wrote,
David Gerard wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
There really should be different sourcing
guidelines for different
fields in Wikipedia - popular culture is just "different" to history,
science or geography.
Some sort of referencing should be possible. For TV or movie synopses,
the text itself as an implicit reference is obvious and sufficient, for
example.
To some extent we can make use of "standard" references. The Internet
Movie Data Base is a good example for movies, but that won't work for
everything. Many subjects, however, are more controversial and the
standards there need to be more stringent .
I agree that in certain areas we can make good use of "standard"
references. However, this leads me to an issue that has concerned me for
some time: the use of dictionaries and encyclopedias as sources.
I believe that dictionaries are authorities on the spelling and
pronunciation of words. I also think they can be drawn on to account for
how a word is "commonly" or "popularly" understood. But I am very
strongly
opposed to relying on them actually to define a term in Wikipedia -- at
least, in areas of scholarly and professional concern. For example, OED
may or may not have a good definition of "evolution." Regardless, I think
the definition of "Evolution" in the "evolution" article should
reflect
the mainstream understanding of evolutionary scientists (I do NOT want to
go into SPOV vs. NPOV; if it makes things easier, I have no problem with
(1) specifying that this is how evolutionary scientists define it, and (2)
mention that non-evolutionary scientists have other definitions). OED may
or may not have a good definition of "imperialism." Regardless, I think
the definition of "imperialism" in the "imperialism" article should
reflect
the mainstream understanding of political scientists and historians (and
perhaps even politicians (again, I have no problem with (1) specifying that
this is how scholars and professionals define it, and (2) mention that
non-scholars scientists have other definitions). According to our
"Wikipedia is not a dictionary" policy, we state that it is good to start
articles with a definition. I think relying on dictionary definitions is
(a) lazy (we are letting whoever wrote researched the dictionary do our
research for us. This is not a problem when it comes to relying on books
by scholars in writing an article, but dictionary definitions are the
ultimate product of abstracting from various sources. This is precisely
what our job should be), (b) redundant (anyone who has access to Wikipedia
has access to OED online or
Answers.com and can get a definition that way,
and (c) may very well conflict with the body of the article, if we are
drawing on sources written by scholars and professionals. I believe that
the "Wikipedia is not a dictionary" and the "Cite Sources" pages
should be
revised to address this.
Other encyclopedias are great ways to begin research, since they give us an
idea of what an article on a topic could cover, and sometimes provides
references we can turn to. I also think it is a useful exercise to compare
our articles to those in other encyclopedias, just to get a sense as to
whether we have missed something important. But I object to using articles
from other encyclopedias as sources for our articles. It seems so patently
absurd to me, it is hard to explain why -- except I know others do this
regularly, so I have to. So okay, it comes down to similar reasons for my
rejecting dictionaries as sources (at least, in areas of scholarly and
professional concern). First, encyclopedia articles are the ultimate
product of abstracting from various sources. This is precisely what our
job should be. To rely on the research of others to me seems to devalue
our own role as researchers. Second, since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia,
it seems terribly derivative to base our articles on the articles of other
encyclopedias. Moreover, Wikipedia is an experiment in a new way of
producing an encyclopedia; to rely on conventional encyclopedias seems to
undermine our own integrity, what defines us as unique and special. I
grant that there may be occasions in which other encyclopedias can (like
the IMDB Ec mentions) be useful resources, but I think these cases should
be the exceptions, not the rule. And I think we need to revise our
policies to make this clear.
Steve
Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701