> From: "Graham Burnett" <grahamburnett(a)blueyonder.co.uk>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] External links in articles, and a citations
> feature?
> Personally i'd like to see MORE external links/citations, and was even
> thinking of proposing a feature for including citations or attributiuons
> within articles.
>
> From: Christopher Mahan <chris_mahan(a)yahoo.com>
>
> put them at the bottom of the article, under Extternal links, under
> References. Then reference them in the text as you would in a english
> composition class paper.
I would really like to see more use of attributions, references, citations
within Wikipedia. Traditional encyclopedias don't do very much of this, but
I think this is a serious weakness on their part. The traditional
encyclopedia simply speaks _ex cathedra_, and the only reason you have for
believing it is that "they wouldn't print it if it weren't true." Even if
(reportedly) the U. S. version of Microsoft Encarta says the light bulb was
invented by Edison, and the British version says it was Swan. (The old
Britannica used to at least have the articles initialed, so you at least knew
that "well, Lord Rayleigh thinks so.")
I remember being shocked in high school when I learned for the first time
that an encyclopedia could not be referenced in a scholarly article because
it didn't meet scholarly standards for attribution.
I don't know why print encyclopedias don't choose to reference their sources.
Presumably it's limited space, and/or a desire not to clutter up the article
with footnotes. Or perhaps it's a feeling that for the stubby two-paragraph
articles the article-to-references ratio wouldn't be very high. Wikipedia
has fewer space limitations.
However, wiki-markup has no convenient way of representing footnotes and
citations. In my fantasy, some hypertexty mechanism could give you the best
of both world--invisible footnotes that don't interrupt the text but can be
made visible if you want to trace the authority for something.
I agree that there's nothing to stop anyone from doing what Christopher Mahan
suggests. And that would be a good thing.
But at the very least, I'd like to see a convenient way of doing an inter-
page link, so that you can put a citation in the text that is just an
unobtrusive thing like a single character, such that clicking on it takes you
to the reference in the references section--AND automatically puts a RETURN-
link in the reference. I believe you can do this today with hand-tuned HTML,
but...
It seems to me that a policy that encourages the inclusion of references, and
a markup mechanism that makes them easy to write and read, would support in
the spirit of NPOV and "X REPORTS Y ABOUT Z."
strategy)
Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 11:52:54 -0800
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Poor Edmund wrote:
>...
>Some other respected contributors, recognizing the difficulty
>they have writing neutrally on subjects they feel passionately
>about, avoid those topics altogether. Daniel Mayer (Maveric)
>sets the best example I'm aware of, in this respect.
NOTE: I'm speaking in generalities here (meaning I'm not alluding to the
current conflict between RK and Danny et al.)
Thanks for the compliment. :-) However, I happen to be interested in many
different things, so changing direction away from my own POV landmine fields
is easier for me than I suspect it is for many people (who may be primarily
interested in contributing to areas they may not be able to easily write
neutrally on). I also edit and add content to relax, believe it or not. Edit
wars in which the content I add is reverted into a page's history is not what
I would call relaxing.
>The two best things I've found to help me avoid partisan
>fighting at Wikipedia are:
>
>1. Summarize the POV of my "opponent" /TO HIS SATISFACTION/ !!!
This is often difficult, but can also be fun so long you are not too close the
subject. I like your advice of editing slowly and reacting deliberatively
when editing articles whose topics are close to you.
Big changes to articles on hot topics often result in some sort of conflict.
>2. If one of my contributions is reverted (even once), take
> this as a signal that I'm NOT DOING AN ADEQUATE JOB of
> reflecting POVs other than my own.
This is true, to an extent. Sometimes the other person is not reasonable and
in fact doesn't want an NPOV article, but one that pushes a certain POV (and
this can even be on a subconscience level where the other person can't even
see their own POV as POV but instead view their POV as fact).
So sometimes forcing edit warriors to slow down is what is needed. It is near
impossible to write toward NPOV during an edit war because emotions get in
the way and cloud people's judgment.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
There are two reasons I don't do anything, once an article makes its way
to VfD:
1. The matter will be decided by a vote.
2. The vote will ignore what I do to fix the article.
So many times, I've labored for over an hour on an article, just to find
it deleted by a committee vote. I'd rather run for political office, at
least I might get my picture in the paper.
If the article is really THAT BAD, just delete it: you're an admin, be
bold and can that trash!
If it just needs a lot of work, pick a volunteer and assign him (or her)
the task of fixing it.
If they refuse, they lose one WikiDollar ;-)
Ed Poor
Viajero <viajero(a)quilombo.nl> writes:
> I was the one who listed the original article,
> [[Palestinian views of the peace process]], on VfD in
> mid-December. I had encountered the article last
> summer and was appalled by it,
Yes, but only because it made available verified
Palestinian quotes that you wanted to hide. You could not
point out any POV problems; rather, you claimed that the
topic's mere *existence* was a POV violation. That, of
course, is not tenable.
In theory, I could have written editorials containing my
point of view about these Palestinian views; but as you can
see for yourselves, I did no such thing. I merely allowed
both groups of Palestinians to speak for themselves, in
their own words. That includes both those that are working
for a permanent peace with Israel, and those that view the
peace process as a "Trojan horse" (their own words) for
destroying Israel. People can see the array of views and
draw their own conclusions. This is the very definition of
NPOV, precisely what we have been aiming for in all our
other articles.
> six or eight people also agreed the thing was clearly a
> POV rant that was hopelessly beyond salvation,
Six or eight people can write all the fiction they want.
But their claims cannot be made true by repeating them. As
you can see for yourself, that text contains zero points of
view _about_ the Palestinians; rather, it only presents
their own points of view, and allows readers to draw their
own conclusions. Your problem is that you do not want
readers to draw their own conclusions; you have your own
conclusion you are forcing on us.
> At this point, I have neither the time, the energy, nor
> the scholarly resources to offer a detailed explanation
> as to why the material in that article was so bad:
So we should delete entire articles just on your say so?
While Danny and Zero agree with you, I think most of us can
agree that this is silly.
> suffice to say that it comes across as a collection of
> quotes of dubious origin take completely out of context,
Sorry, but now you are making things up in an effort to
slander me. These quotes were presented in detail precisely
because left-wing Wikipedia readers kept denying their
existence. That is precisely why lenghty quotes were given;
so that no one could possibly see them as being out of
context.
Further, these quotes are representative of a much wider
Palestinian literature that is widely available both in the
original Arabic and English translation. Finally, these
quotes are well verified, and most significantly, the
Palestinians themselves do not deny them. In fact, they are
proud of them. The only problem is that some people are
uncomfortable with these views, and thus keep trying to
hide them. That is not worthy of an encyclopedia project.
Robert (RK)
=====
"I prefer a wicked person who knows he is wicked, to a righteous person who knows he is righteous".
The Seer of Lublin [Jacob Isaac Ha-Hozeh Mi-Lublin, 1745-1815]
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
Part of the problem is the "authority and endorsement" issue.
Robert (RK) appears, in the eyes of some Wikipedians, to be making the
following argument:
* Palestinians say they want peace, but
* Here is the proof that they really want to destroy Israel.
Thus it appears that Robert is trying to get Wikipedia to endorse /his
personal POV/ that the Palestinians are lying. Hence the complaints that
he's "engaging in original research" or "writing from a POV".
I have occasionally had a similar problem with Sheldon and William. One
of us will try to find "proof" that scientists or politicians "really"
support or oppose a particular scientific hypothesis. Then one of us
will complain that it's just POV.
Well, the Wikipedia will never be a place to resolves political or
scientific disputes. Not until we depose our Philosopher King and
eliminate his NPOV policy.
Whatever the dispute is, the solution has always been -- and always will
be -- to /identify/ the advocates of the various sides and /attribute/
their stated POV to them.
If it's a dispute over whether a quote is authentic, then we can say:
* UPI quoted Arafat as desiring peaceful coexistence with Israel
* Jayson Blair, a reporter for the New York Times, hired an Arabic
translation who says Arafat's recent speech to Hezbollah and Herbrestah
is filled with repeated calls for the immediate and total destruction of
Israel.
That leaves the reader with the choice of believing UPI or Jayson Blair.
Wikipedia isn't going to tell him whom to believe.
Or if a contributor doesn't think UPI has any credibility, then how
about CNN or Fox News or the Washington Post or Al-Jazeera? Or how about
an historian or legal scholar? Or any other published source? I don't
care who says it, as long as you provide the identity of the speaker.
I'll decide for myself if I agree with them or not.
This issue keeps coming up, but the solution is always the same:
LET THE ARTICLE SAY THAT X REPORTS Y ABOUT Z.
Uncle Ed
> I think the concept of what is "encyclopedic
> knowledge" needs to be made more explicit
Encyclopedic knowledge is verifiable and informative, amongst other qualities.
[[wikipedia:verifiable]]
[[wikipedia:informative]]
We're slowly and quietly amassing quite a wealth of information on how to decide
what should and should not be deleted. (though I will probably now discover that one
or both of these articles has been deleted!)
-Martin "MyRedDice" Harper
Erik said some very insightful stuff about our current deletion process, but I would
like to take issue with:
> One master believes in rules and due process, the other believes
> in creative chaos and consensus
I think it is more accurate to suggest that one master believes in rules, another
believes in votes, and a third believes in consensus. There actually is a lot of
support, even a near consensus, behind the "due process" side of things, which is
why there's always so much fuss if a sysop deletes a page in a way that isn't strictly
supported by our deletion policy.
Currently we fudge the three viewpoints by essentially allowing the sysop/user taking
the decision to decide on what basis to take it - "rough consensus" covers a
multitude of sins. While clearly non-ideal, it's not as bad as it sounds - we're
empowering those who take the decisions, and since they're the ones who get the
flak, that seems kinda fair.
-- Martin "MyRedDice" Harper
Hi.
I would like to comment on one aspect of our collective behaviour in these cases:
We're focusing on the text that is being disputed, rather than focusing on the conflict
generated by the text. This seems to be quite common, and I believe it was first
noted by "Louis Kyu Won Ryu" in relation to the conflict over Mother Teresa. People
who comment start talking first about whether the disputed text is accurate or not,
and the conversation revolves around text.
There is some logic to this: often, improving the text resolves the dispute, and
particularly for smaller scale incidents, many of us have realised than ten minutes of
research is worth ten hours of edit war and debate. So this text orientated approach
has its place. That place is on the relevant talk page, or the article itself, not on this
mailing list. Also, note that while editing the disputed text is often effective, telling
someone else to edit the disputed text has a long and distinguished history of
abysmal failure.
However, I wonder whether this approach is perhaps overused. Sometimes disputes
can be resolved or prevented by focusing on the people, rather than the text.
Sometimes a dispute may not be resolvable right now, and we need to take a
"damage limitation" approach, while we wait for someone to come along with the
time, knowledge, and wisdom to solve the problem at text level. In this case, if the
problem could be easily resolved at the text level, surely one of the frequent
contributors to the Isr/Pal pages would have done so - if they've failed to do so, is it
reasonable to hope that we can do so?
I think we should recall that Danny didn't come to this list asking us to write the
perfect account of Palestinian views of the peace process. Indeed, I would imagine
that the person most capable of writing such an account would be Danny! Rather,
Danny came here to discuss the "bullying strategy" that he felt that Robert Kaiser
was using. The same focus on behaviour is evident with most of the cases raised on
the mailing list, which I think underlines my feelings.
WikiLove,
-- Martin "MyRedDice" Harper
Hi
I would first suggest to Danny and Robert Kaiser that, since they feel unable to reach
a direct resolution with each other, it might well be appropriate for one of them to
request formal mediation. I'm sure the mediation group will be delighted to intervene,
and I wish them the very best of luck.
I do not intend to get deeply involved in this conflict at this stage. However, I note a
comment from RK to Danny that "your repeated mass deletions are censorship and
may get you banned", which reminds me of similar statements by him in the past. I
would like to remind Robert that it is the sysops who decide whether pure vandalism
warrants a ban, and (now) the arbitration committee which decides whether other
behaviour warrants a ban. Speculation about such decisions has a poor record in the
promotion of WikiLove.
Cheers,
-- Martin "MyRedDice" Harper
Ed wrote:
>This issue keeps coming up, but the solution is always the same:
>
> LET THE ARTICLE SAY THAT X REPORTS Y ABOUT Z.
Exactly! This is why I think that [[Wikipedia:Verifiability]] is so important.
Otherwise an article becomes a mix of opposing POVs of various Wikipedians
which, at best, masquerades as NPOV by sounding neutral.
--mav