On Jul 23, 2005, at 6:21 PM, wikien-l-request@Wikipedia.org wrote:
Impressive responses. One point: OR is often used as a an excuse to squash certain debated points, without allowing them to devlop (including citing sources). A silly example might be something like "go find some source for your notion that the world is round, and come back when you do so." Such source can then be debated for a while.
I, and everyone else, frequently insert stuff that is "well known" without citing sources. "Beethoven is widely regarded as one of the greatest of composers..." "f = m * a"...
However, whenever a statement, however obvious, is seriously challenged, I take it seriously.
IF something is TRULY well known, it is usually EASY to find a source. When someone says cite a source, I just find one and cite it.
And the article is the better for it.
Let's take "The world is round." I have just spent ten minutes browsing my bookshelves looking for the clearest citation. A popular book by Menzel entitled Astronomy... nope. "A Field Guide to the Stars and Planets?" Nope. "Norton's Star Atlas?" Nope. All of them give the radius of the earth... but fail to say in so many words that the world is round, because, well, everybody knows that.
Aha. I have it.
"The earth is approximately an oblate spheroid (a sphere flattened at the poles.... For many navigational purposes the earth is assumed to be a sphere, without intolerable error."
There you go. _American Practical Navigator: An Epitome of Navigation_, originally by Nathaniel Bowditch, LL. D. 1966--Corrected Print. Published by the U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office. U. S. Government Printing Office, 1966. Pp. 62-63.
And that settles it. Nobody can argue that _that_ book doesn't contain _that_ sentence. Anyone can check it out. It does. Any argument about the authority of the book is beside the point. It's an objective fact that that book contains that sentence.
Once I've cited the source, I can replace the sentence in the article that says "the world is round" with the sentence "The U. S. Naval Oceanographic Office states that for many navigational purposes the earth is assumed to be a sphere, without intolerable error." Problem solved.
It's now up to anyone who disagrees with it to cite _their_ source. It's up to the reader to judge which sources are reliable. If the reader trusts John Cleves Symmes, Jr. more than he or she trusts the U. S. Naval Oceanographic Office, that's their prerogative.
-- Jean is going to be bicycling 83 miles in the Pan Mass Challenge in August, raising money for cancer research. Her profile is at http:// www.pmc.org/mypmc/profiles.asp?Section=story&eGiftID=JS0417