In a message dated 7/13/2008 9:46:11 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, snowspinner@gmail.com writes:
I mean, I do not see how we can justify making the position Ken is holding here one we demand sources for. It is demonstrably a less difficult and complex inference than ones we allow by default. I do not doubt your good faith in asserting otherwise, but unless there's something I'm missing, you are completely and utterly wrong.>>
-------------------- Ok so he says that the katakana, hiragana, etc. transliteration is unambiguous, and all I have to do to counter that is to say, "No, it's actually ambiguous".
And one of those positions is more correct because ? what? Because someone says so without actually demonstrating any citation whatsoever to the specific or general statement. Just their say-so.
That's really your position? Because I have no idea from where a position like that comes. It's certainly not the sort of position to which I'm accustomed.
Will Johnson
**************Get the scoop on last night's hottest shows and the live music scene in your area - Check out TourTracker.com! (http://www.tourtracker.com?NCID=aolmus00050000000112)
On Sun, 13 Jul 2008 WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
Ok so he says that the katakana, hiragana, etc. transliteration is unambiguous, and all I have to do to counter that is to say, "No, it's actually ambiguous".
We don't demand sources for how to count to 2 or how to look up Morse code, simply because someone says "no, I don't believe that" and claims that saying so makes it into a dispute that needs a source. A dispute is at minimum a *sincere* disagreement, not simply a way of using a rule to make people jump through hoops.
On Sun, Jul 13, 2008 at 9:39 PM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Sun, 13 Jul 2008 WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
Ok so he says that the katakana, hiragana, etc. transliteration is unambiguous, and all I have to do to counter that is to say, "No, it's actually ambiguous".
We don't demand sources for how to count to 2 or how to look up Morse code, simply because someone says "no, I don't believe that" and claims that saying so makes it into a dispute that needs a source. A dispute is at minimum a *sincere* disagreement, not simply a way of using a rule to make people jump through hoops.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
However, it is rather an assumption of bad faith to state that a dispute is -not- sincere. It really is pretty clear-if the material is likely to be challenged, or -is in practice challenged-, source it. If it's really blatantly obvious, sourcing will take all of five seconds. With some very simple searches, I can source that the Earth is round, orbits the sun, and that the chemical formula for water is H2O. If you have to argue about sourcing it, it's probably not as obvious as you thought to begin with, and then it really -is- good to go find a source. If it's that blatantly obvious, you'll find a source quickly.
On Sun, Jul 13, 2008 at 10:01:03PM -0600, Todd Allen wrote:
With some very simple searches, I can source that the Earth is round, orbits the sun, and that the chemical formula for water is H2O.
The issue isn't whether we can source those things. The issue is that we _should not_ give individual references for facts like that. Because:
* Attaching a source to them gives the false impression that they are controverisal, or that the source given is going to say something particularly profound about the topic. If too many footnotes are used, it's no longer possible to tell which footnotes are actually interesting to check and which are for facts that nobody disagrees with. This makes the footnotes much less useful for a reader, who can no longer use them to build intuition about the material.
* Doing web searchs to find sources leads to a random hodgepodge of dozens of references, each used just to source one simple fact. This is an awful writing style, and often leads to the use of poor references (web pages, etc.) found in the web searches. It's better to stick to professionally published textbooks and articles.
* Especially in the sciences and mathematics, sourcing trivial facts like you listed above is completely odds with accepted practices in the field.
[[Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines]] has a nice explanation of the things that should be sourced. In particular, regarding basic facts like the ones above, it says:
The verifiability criteria require that such statements be sourced so that in principle anyone can verify them. However, in many articles it is cumbersome to provide an in-line reference for every statement. In addition, such dense referencing can obscure the logical interdependence of statements. Therefore, in sections or articles that present well-known and uncontroversial information – information that is readily available in most common and obvious books on the subject – it is acceptable to give an inline citation for one or two authoritative sources (and possibly a more accessible source, if one is available) in such a way as to indicate that these sources can be checked to verify statements for which no other in-line citation is provided.
- Carl
On Mon, 14 Jul 2008, Carl Beckhorn wrote:
The issue isn't whether we can source those things. The issue is that we _should not_ give individual references for facts like that. Because:
While I certainly can't disagree with you, it's even worse than this. The problems you run into are: -- This isn't a sincere request for sources, it's a filibuster. Providing a source will just lead to further demands like "you need a source for how to write the whole word, not just a source for each kana" or "you'll need a source to show that it's a mistake, rather than the company intentionally changing this in a way that resembles a mistake". (Incidentally, this is also an abuse of AGF.) -- It's ridiculous to say that a source must be given for anything challenged, rather than for anything sincerely challenged. This leads to exactly what's happening here: troublemakers deliberately taking advantage of the rule by using spurious challenges. -- The idea that "if it's so simple, it'll be easy to find a source" just isn't true. It's often easy to find a reference, but many web references aren't suitable as Wikipedia sources. I just Googled up "hiragana table" and found lots of them--but they were personal web pages or even Wikipedia. The first clearly good source I found was this one from Google books, which qualifies because we're much more lenient on accepting published books than web pages as sources: http://books.google.com/books?id=oN23JJhjFpwC&pg=PT65&lpg=PT65&d... This one also explains the small "tsu", so should end this now; of course, it won't.