From: David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au Rick (giantsrick13@yahoo.com) [050129 04:02]:

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I think it's a HORRIBLE idea!!!!! There are far too many articles with no references.

And *that*'s a horrible idea.

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This would be everywhere.

See, a lack of references is a real problem with Wikipedia's reliability and perceived reliability. That means you have nothing to start with on seeing if an article has a source or is just off the top of someone's head. It might be crap with a reference that doesn't support it, but at least then you have a chance to find out.

Traditionally, encyclopedias are _not_ well-referenced. There are sometimes what might be called "selected bibliographies," things the writer things you might want to read next. But references, in the sense of "here's where I got it," no.

Many, but by no means all of the articles in the EB 11th have a set of contributor's initials (which you can look up in a table). Odd, since it doesn't save that much space; the editors don't really want you to focus on the contributor. Which is not that helpful anyway. When it's someone like Ernest Rutherford, well, you probably can figure they knew what they were talking about. For the rest, their credibility basically rests on the jumble of letters after their name and the miniature who's-who-like description.

Have I ever heard of "Arthur Dendy, D. Sc., F.R.S., F.Z.S., F.L.S., Professor of Zoology in King's College, London, Zoological Secretary of the Linnean [sic] Society of London. Author of memoirs on systematic zoology, comparative anatomy, embryology, &c?" No. Do I think he knows his stuff when it comes to sponges? Well, yeah, sure, sounds like it, probably. Most of my profs didn't have that many letters after their name. I have no way of knowing whether he was a POV-pusher, though, and you'd better believe you can have letters after your name and still be a POV-pusher. Big-time.

But Wikipedia is different, because basically it's all written by anons, registered or not.

I haven't been following the "bad reference/good reference" stuff but I find the whole idea baffling. The purpose of a reference is very simple. You're telling people where you got your information. It's not a question of good or bad, it's a simple statement of fact. If I got my "facts" from The National Enquirer, and I say I got them from the National Enquirer and give the date and page number, that's a good reference. The only bad reference would be an untruthful reference--if I got them from the National Enquirer and said they were from The New York Times.

But, either way: if I give the reference, I'm giving people reasonable assurance that I didn't just make them up, unless I'm a total liar and fraud, and there aren't that many of them contributing to Wikipedia.

And either way, a reference is verifiable. If someone says that The New York Times published an article about a 400-pound eight-year-old girl who was inseminated by a space alien and gave birth to a two-headed unicorn, on page 7, July 16th, 2000, well as it happens I can go online courtesy of my local public library and find out in about sixty seconds whether there's really such an article. (I'll leave you in suspense as to the answer on that one).

If I say "I got it from the National Enquirer, page 1, April 1st, 2000," well, first of all, a lot of people will be able to say right of the bat, "Great, so I won't believe it."

Furthermore, _I can check the context._ Maybe it says "It is said that the natives of some remote Canary Islands have an ancient legend that a 400-pound, etc." The chain of traceability is broken. Vanished into the mists of the Canaries.

But maybe it says "Dr. Fargo M. Seneca, chief obstetrician at St. Mary's Hospital in Madison, said that a 400-pound etc." Cool! Another source citation! I can call up St. Mary's and say I'm writing an article for Wikipedia and could I speak to Dr. Seneca.

(By the way: I've had _very_ good luck contacting "press" contacts by email or phone, and saying "I'm editing an article in Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, and I was trying to check thus-and-such fact..." I always give Wikipedia's URL. And sometimes I even explain that anybody can edit Wikipedia. So far, I've gotten respectful and helpful treatment every time).

So, I say, cite your sources. If you got it from a secondary source, just say so. The important thing is to _say where you got it_ and maintain a chain of traceability.

P. S. True story. In grad school, there were a bunch of us discussing whether or not UFOs were real. One guy was very impressed by a book written by someone from APRO or NICAP or something, and, in particular, by a statement that some pieces of an alien craft had been analyzed and were of some substance--I forget what--of a purity that was never seen on Earth and couldn't occur on Earth as the oxygen would do something-or-other within a few weeks. I think this was someone who knew enough chemistry/metallurgy to judge that if the stuff really was that pure, it really did need to be extraterrestrial.

So I said, "OK, let's take this as our test case. How do we know he wasn't just making it up?" Well, the scientist who did the analysis was, I don't know, a Dr. Ortega Perez-Guillermo of the Metallurgy Department, University of San Andrés, La Paz, Bolivia, or something like that.

Well, this was a big state university we were at and it had a fine library. One thing I really, really, really miss about not being in grad school is not being within a five minute walk of a fine library. So we did a bit of poking around. Guess what? They had several staff directories for Universidad de San Andrés, La Paz, Bolivia. It turned out that the University de San Andrés hasn't even got a Departamento de la metalurgia. And in any case, it didn't have anyone named Dr Ortega Perez-Guillermo in any department.

I asked whether we should write to the university, but it was generally agreed that it didn't seem as if that story was very credible.

Source citations are heap big medicine.

-- Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith@verizon.net "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print! Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/