WikiEN-l October 2008

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"Citation needed" in popular culture
by David Gerard 10 Sep '10

10 Sep '10

How long until there's an entry on [[Citation needed]]? http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Anatomii-of-a-Hack.aspx - d.

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Linking Dates
by Marc Riddell 30 Apr '10

30 Apr '10

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

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25 Jul '09

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.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

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Dealing with disappearing online sources
by Michel Vuijlsteke 22 Feb '09

22 Feb '09

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

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Dealing with disappearing online sources
by nsk 21 Feb '09

21 Feb '09

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/

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WP articles citing other WP articles??
by Angela Anuszewski 03 Nov '08

03 Nov '08

I just encountered, on the article [[House (TV series)]], that citation #3 is actually just a link to [[Words and Deeds (House)]]. Can a article really cite another article or should that citation be removed? Seems a little squirrely to me. Angela -- Wikipedia:[[User:Psu256]]

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Fwd: [Wikitech-l] en.wiki migrated to new search backend
by David Gerard 31 Oct '08

31 Oct '08

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Robert Stojnic <rainmansr(a)gmail.com> Date: 2008/10/31 Subject: [Wikitech-l] en.wiki migrated to new search backend To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Hi all, We now have english wikipedia fully migrated to new servers / new search backend. We cannot fully migrate other wikis until we resolve some hardware issues. In the meantime, here is the overview of new features now deployed on en.wiki: 1) Did you mean... - we now have search suggestions. Care has been taken to provide suggestions that are context-sensitive, i.e. on phrases, proper names, etc.. 2) fuzzy and wildcard queries - a word can be made fuzzy by adding ~ to it's end, e.g. query sarah~ thompson~ will give all different spellings and similar names to sarah thompson. Wildcards can now be prefix and suffix, e.g. *stan will give various countries in central asia. 3) prefix: - using this magic prefix, queries can be limited to pages beginning with certain prefix. E.g. mwsuggest prefix:Wikipedia:Village Pump will search all village pumps and archives for mwsuggest. This should be especially useful for archive searching in concert with inputbox or searchbox 4) intitle: - using this magic prefix, queries can be limited to titles only 5) generally improved quality of search results via usage of related articles (based on co-occurrence of links), anchor text, text abstracts, proximity within articles, sections, redirects, improved stemming and such Cheers, Robert _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Slashdot article
by WJhonson＠aol.com 31 Oct '08

31 Oct '08

In a message dated 10/30/2008 3:33:25 PM Pacific Daylight Time, arromdee(a)rahul.net writes: He was a relatively minor figure, making a statement about himself which was neither overly promotional nor overly damaging. Someone in that situation is far more likely to be real than fake. And he was complaining about something which, by our own rules, doesn't require that the complaint comes from the subject anyway.>> --------------------- And I already stated how I would have dealt with it, and you've already stated how you would have dealt with it. It's time to move on I think. **************Plan your next getaway with AOL Travel. Check out Today's Hot 5 Travel Deals! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1212416248x1200771803/aol?redir=htt…)

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Slashdot article
by WJhonson＠aol.com 30 Oct '08

30 Oct '08

In a message dated 10/30/2008 11:34:26 AM Pacific Daylight Time, arromdee(a)rahul.net writes: We knew who he was by any reasonable standards,>> ----------------- {{fact}} I don't know why you would trust anyone who said "I'm so-and-so". Many times I've had people say this when it's not true. **************Plan your next getaway with AOL Travel. Check out Today's Hot 5 Travel Deals! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1212416248x1200771803/aol?redir=htt…)

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Slashdot article
by WJhonson＠aol.com 30 Oct '08

30 Oct '08

In a message dated 10/30/2008 11:34:26 AM Pacific Daylight Time, arromdee(a)rahul.net writes: The normal course of action is to delete the statement, at least if it's a sincere complaint.>> -------------------------- That's *your* course of action Ken and no one is stopping you. Go do it. It's not *my* course of action, and no one is going to make me do it :) Can we move on now? Or are you practicing ? **************Plan your next getaway with AOL Travel. Check out Today's Hot 5 Travel Deals! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1212416248x1200771803/aol?redir=htt…)

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WikiEN-l October 2008