From: jayjg jayjg99@gmail.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2006 11:20:07 -0500 To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR (contd)
On 12/26/06, Ryan Wetherell renardius@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/26/06, jayjg jayjg99@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/26/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
No, a source is only required for anything that is disputed. That's pretty fundamental, WP:V. Quite workable and highly desirable.
Jay.
And it goes above and beyond just WP. Citations of claims, inferences/conclusions/derived statements, and non-obvious factual statements (that is, not common knowledge [taking the arbitrary nature of "common knowledge" into consideration, of course]) are simply an academic "must" if you aim to be taken seriously. That's how I interpret relevant Wikipedia policies, and how I apply them.
That's the point; if Wikipedia is going to become a source of knowledge that is taken seriously, instead of being continually derided, its standards are going to be have to be high, rather than "it's ridiculous that I should have to cite all of my claims".]
Hello,
I would like to jump in here for a moment.
I have been editing in Wikipedia for nearly a year now, and have been encouraging my colleagues (Im a Clinical Psychologist) to do the same. The one overriding criticism I have heard regarding the encyclopedia is that anyone can edit it. For a clinician, student or any professional researcher this can (and is) quite a deterrent to taking the substance of the material found in Wikipedia seriously. With the existence of anonymous editors adding supposedly substantive content, it is impossible to verify and, if wanted, to challenge this material with the person that entered it.
There seems to be a great concern about having verifiable material sources¹ in Wikipedia that can be checked; why not place at least as much importance on the sources¹ (the editors) of the very material that is included? We want to be able to check the reliability of the substance of the text, but seem to place little importance on being able to check on who entered it in the first place.
If I want to question the substance of an Article in Wikipedia, I should be able to go to an editor¹s personal information page and get a sense that they have the expertise to be editing the material, and a page where I can contact them with questions. Every, reputable reference work has this.
Marc Riddell
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