[WikiEN-l] Citation obsession

[Anthony]

On 4/29/07, Ken Arromdee <arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 29 Apr 2007, Todd Allen wrote:
> > I don't generally see such things as worth arguing over. If someone
> > -really- wants a citation for that, or that the Earth's atmosphere is
> > mainly nitrogen and oxygen, or that Einstein was a physicist, you can
> > find one in thirty seconds. If something is really as obvious as you
> > think it is, citation is trivially easy.
>
> This may be true if it's one person demanding one citation.  This is not so
> much the case if someone demands twenty citations, each for a different
> obvious fact.  (Or if they slap "citation needed" on a whole paragraph or
> section and demand citations for all the obvious facts without trying to
> list them individually.)
>
> It also takes a lot longer than thirty seconds to correctly format a
> citation.  And citations are harder to find than you think.   Most sources
> you'll find in a thirty second search will be self-published web pages,
> and we can't use self-published sources.  Even just figuring out whether or
> not a web page is self-published within the Wikipedia meaning takes longer than
> 30 seconds.
>
This is all true.  It's hard to write a good encyclopedia article,
whereas it's easy to slap together a bunch of obvious facts on a wiki
and call it an encyclopedia article.

It's also a lot easier to provide sources if you provide them at the
same time that you add the text.  Formatting still takes time if
you're not an expert on the ridiculous formats, but if you just stick
in <ref>a text description of your source</ref> someone else will
usually format it for you.

A big culture change is necessary if Wikipedia is going to have
well-sourced articles.  A few Mediawiki changes wouldn't hurt, though.
 There should be a mandatory field to list a source for all non-minor
changes to an article.  It doesn't stop people from marking their
major changes as minor or from writing "my head" as the source, but at
least it does make you consciously decide to break what are apparently
the rules of the project.

Anthony