Is there any reason why we dont introduce immediately a rule that says all new information added to an article must be sourced or referenced or the edit will automatically be reverted? And any new articles must be sourced or referenced within two hours, say, of their creation, or will be speedily deleted?
Unsourced information has no place on the encyclopaedia, and the person introducing the information is best placed to know where he got it from. OK, this idea is not a panacea - it doesnt help reference up information already in the encyclopaedia, but itd stop making the problem worse. Nor would it address the issue of editors making up false sources - but any regular editor doing that will soon be rumbled, and this issue is already around anyway.
Editors would soon get used to the new requirement - and itd have the benefit of making all those RC and New Pages patrollers who currently do not improve the encyclopaedia one jot (they merely prevent it from degrading) actually help improve the project by enforcing proper standards.
Ideally [[Wikipedia:Verifiability]] and [[Wikipedia:Cite sources]] would undergo a quick re-write to explain better how sources can be given, but that can easily be done. This idea would start to improve our quality immediately, and make a Siegenthaler repeat far less likely. Why not go for it?
Jon (jguk)
--------------------------------- To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre.
On 12/13/05, Jon thagudearbh@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
Is there any reason why we don't introduce immediately a rule that says all new information added to an article must be sourced or referenced or the edit will automatically be reverted? And any new articles must be sourced or referenced within two hours, say, of their creation, or will be speedily deleted?
We don't have the rescources to police this.
-- geni
On 12/15/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/13/05, Jon thagudearbh@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
Is there any reason why we don't introduce immediately a rule that says all new information added to an article must be sourced or referenced or the edit will automatically be reverted? And any new articles must be sourced or referenced within two hours, say, of their creation, or will be speedily deleted?
We don't have the rescources to police this.
We could make a start by introducing such a rule for biographies of living people. We have to provide a source when we upload an image or risk that it be deleted in short order. And yet there's so such requirement when adding a claim about a living person that could potentially damage them. That discrepancy suggests we have our priorities upside down.
Sarah
slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
We could make a start by introducing such a rule for biographies of living people. We have to provide a source when we upload an image or risk that it be deleted in short order. And yet there's so such requirement when adding a claim about a living person that could potentially damage them. That discrepancy suggests we have our priorities upside down.
Sarah
Yes!
Sydney Poore
Go Bengals!
slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote
And yet there's no such
requirement when adding a claim about a living person that could potentially damage them. That discrepancy suggests we have our priorities upside down.
No libels or slurs are welcome on Wikipedia. That said, the risk of blandness in dealing with live people is very real. We _must not_ give people the right of approval on what WP writes about them.
Charles
On 12/15/05, charles matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
No libels or slurs are welcome on Wikipedia. That said, the risk of blandness in dealing with live people is very real. We _must not_ give people the right of approval on what WP writes about them.
I agree that people shouldn't have the right of approval over their WP pages, but equally we shouldn't adopt a belligerent published-and-be-damned position either. Waking up one morning to find a Wikipedia article exists about you, one that anyone can edit, must be a horrible experience quite frankly. We should be respectful to people who are worried about it, and we should always err on the side of caution and kindness, in my view. An aggressive journalistic stance isn't appropriate, because we have no fact-checking process, no public-interest claims, no teams of lawyers and publishers overseeing publication. And, most importantly, we have no fixed, final version where the thing is finally put to bed.
I'm in touch with one man who feels he was defamed in an article. The information was removed after he contacted Jimbo, but he writes that he has to check every day to make sure it hasn't been added again. In other words, we've changed this man's life, and yet he's not particularly notable, the people who keep adding the information are mischief-making, and the claims that were made about him weren't in any sense newsworthy.
We need to sort out our publishing philosophy when it comes to the biographies of living people, or claims about living people in other articles. Errors in other kinds of articles are annoying, but errors about living people are potentially cruel and very damaging, even if they don't reach the level of an actionable libel. We need to start thinking not only in terms of accuracy and verifiability, but also in terms of *fairness*.
Sarah
slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote
I'm in touch with one man who feels he was defamed in an article. The
information was removed after he contacted Jimbo, but he writes that he has to check every day to make sure it hasn't been added again. In other words, we've changed this man's life, and yet he's not particularly notable, the people who keep adding the information are mischief-making, and the claims that were made about him weren't in any sense newsworthy.
What are the actual implications of this?
Note firstly that if one wants to do random defamation on the Internet, there are 30000 newsgroups to choose from - and once sent, a newsgroup cannot be then removed from the Google archive (OK, technically perhaps it can - but not in the easy way our articles are editable).
WP matters in this only to the extent that WP has got itself a high profile - which recent though the result of some millions of hours of volunteer time. We have climbed a small mountain, at least. Perhaps the view now shows us things we happily did not see before.
Certainly, currently, if someone started arguing that WP is media, rather than a sort of repository of half-finished research, then that makes sense in terms of the kind of reactions we have recently seen.
In this case, can your correspondent really not request admin help, periods of page protection, blocking of the malicious editors?
We need to sort out our publishing philosophy when it comes to the
biographies of living people, or claims about living people in other articles. Errors in other kinds of articles are annoying, but errors about living people are potentially cruel and very damaging, even if they don't reach the level of an actionable libel. We need to start thinking not only in terms of accuracy and verifiability, but also in terms of *fairness*.
It is certainly true that if the letter of the law is NPOV and verifiability, it should not be the spirit of the law here. It would be just another aspect of the excessively legalistic tone we get, as a reward for defining policies better, that people do argue that anything verifiable should be in the page. Obviously it should in some sense be germane. I have had to cut out details of a kidnapped child recently, which was not relevant, even though the information was already in the public domain. And yet - we should not admit arguments on content on the basis of who is making them. That really should be ruled out of court.
Charles
On 12/15/05, charles matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote
And yet there's no such
requirement when adding a claim about a living person that could potentially damage them. That discrepancy suggests we have our priorities upside down.
No libels or slurs are welcome on Wikipedia. That said, the risk of blandness in dealing with live people is very real. We _must not_ give people the right of approval on what WP writes about them.
Charles
Showing them what we write about them and then listening to their response wouldn't be such a bad idea, though.
Unsubstantiated rumors aren't welcome on Wikipedia either. We're lax about it in some cases, but in terms of potentially damaging information we shouldn't be. I'd respond to slimvirgin that Wikipedia:Verifiability already gives editors the power to move unsubstantiated information to the talk page (at least after a good faith effort to locate a source). We just haven't been exercising that power as often as we should.
Anthony
On 12/15/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I'd respond to slimvirgin that Wikipedia:Verifiability already gives editors the power to move unsubstantiated information to the talk page (at least after a good faith effort to locate a source).
Hi Anthony, it's not only a question of claims that have no source, but also claims that have a poor source. The example I mentioned earlier of the man who feels he was defamed: the source was a satirical paper that doesn't mind publishing libels. When he and I tried to remove the claim, a group of people associated with the paper turned up as Wikipedia editors and started edit warring over it, including having the subject RfC-ed and blocked for 3RR. There was nothing I could do about it as an admin, because those edit warring to keep it in weren't in violation of any of our behavior policies, and we can't block over content disputes; and anyway, once I'd edited the page, I couldn't take admin action. So the only thing the subject and I could do was spend hours explaining the content policies ad nauseam, and monitoring every change. It was very, very time-consuming.
Something needs to change to make it easier to remove claims that damage people and that potentially damage Wikipedia.
Sarah
What constitutes a reliable source is necessarily subjective. And I'm not sure it shouldn't be. Appropriateness can change.
But there should be some limits. With the proliferation of blogs, any blog can be argued to be a reliable source.
I wonder if we shouldn't have some sort of page where sourcing can be evaluated? "Sources for Review," or something like that. Some sort of page where people who disagree over whether a source adequately meets Wikipedia's sourcing policies can be reviewed by neutral parties.
k.
--- slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/15/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
I'd respond to slimvirgin that Wikipedia:Verifiability already gives editors the
power to move
unsubstantiated information to the talk page (at
least after a good
faith effort to locate a source).
Hi Anthony, it's not only a question of claims that have no source, but also claims that have a poor source. The example I mentioned earlier of the man who feels he was defamed: the source was a satirical paper that doesn't mind publishing libels. When he and I tried to remove the claim, a group of people associated with the paper turned up as Wikipedia editors and started edit warring over it, including having the subject RfC-ed and blocked for 3RR. There was nothing I could do about it as an admin, because those edit warring to keep it in weren't in violation of any of our behavior policies, and we can't block over content disputes; and anyway, once I'd edited the page, I couldn't take admin action. So the only thing the subject and I could do was spend hours explaining the content policies ad nauseam, and monitoring every change. It was very, very time-consuming.
Something needs to change to make it easier to remove claims that damage people and that potentially damage Wikipedia.
Sarah _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
__________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
Yes, the hand work involved in responding to complaints, takes a lot of resources too. To say nothing of damage to our reputation and possible litigation.
Fred
On Dec 15, 2005, at 8:59 AM, slimvirgin@gmail.com slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/15/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/13/05, Jon thagudearbh@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
Is there any reason why we don't introduce immediately a rule that says all new information added to an article must be sourced or referenced or the edit will automatically be reverted? And any new articles must be sourced or referenced within two hours, say, of their creation, or will be speedily deleted?
We don't have the rescources to police this.
We could make a start by introducing such a rule for biographies of living people. We have to provide a source when we upload an image or risk that it be deleted in short order. And yet there's so such requirement when adding a claim about a living person that could potentially damage them. That discrepancy suggests we have our priorities upside down.
Sarah _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 12/13/05, Jon thagudearbh@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
Is there any reason why we don't introduce immediately a rule that says all new information added to an article must be sourced or referenced or the edit will automatically be reverted?
One good reason is that it would be impossible to implement. Another good reason is that it would give licence to edit warriors to fight over the most trivial of statements. A wiki is a work in progress; we refine articles by adding whatever source information they need, and we sometimes revert particularly contentious statements that haven't yet been sourced.
Hi,
Is there any reason why we don't introduce immediately a rule that says all new information added to an article must be sourced or referenced or the edit will automatically be reverted? And any new articles must be sourced or referenced within two hours, say, of their creation, or will be speedily deleted?
Here's a reason: because currently probably less than 10% of material (and maybe less than 1%) is referenced. So we'd be throwing out almost all changes. And then people would start making fake references etc...
Unsourced information has no place on the encyclopaedia, and the person introducing the information is best placed to know where he got it from. OK, this idea is not a panacea - it doesn't help reference up information already in the encyclopaedia, but it'd stop making the problem worse. Nor would it address the issue of editors making up false sources
- but any regular editor doing that will soon be rumbled, and
this issue is already around anyway.
Does Britannica really reference *that much*?
Editors would soon get used to the new requirement - and it'd have the benefit of making all those RC and New Pages patrollers who currently do not improve the encyclopaedia one jot (they merely prevent it from degrading) actually help improve the project by enforcing proper standards.
I suspect lots of Wikipedia's edits are made by people who have never even read an encyclopedia, let alone are capable of editing to that standard. Referencing and sourcing comes naturally to those of us who have been to university, but for the rest? We could possibly do something like this if it was easier for them - maybe two comment boxes for their changes, one that says what they did, the other that says where it came from. Currently the footnoting system is just a bit too complicated for the average user.
This idea would start to improve our quality immediately, and make a Siegenthaler repeat far less likely. Why not go for it?
IMHO, we're not ready to make such a dramatic change. It would be like suddenly instituting a black tie dress code at your local bar. You could slowly ritz up the bar to a state where people would expect that, but if you just did it overnight, everyone would abandon you overnight. No?
Steve
A better approach is for all of us in our regular editing start gradually asking more often for a reference and do more deleting when it is not provided.
When I do serious editing I am usually working from a book or newspaper article and I have the reference at hand. It would often be very hard for someone else to find that passage just going from whatever I put into a Wikipedia article. So it is easy to put in exact references.
That does not end the matter, but it is a start.
Fred
On Dec 13, 2005, at 12:39 PM, Jon wrote:
Is there any reason why we don’t introduce immediately a rule that says all new information added to an article must be sourced or referenced or the edit will automatically be reverted? And any new articles must be sourced or referenced within two hours, say, of their creation, or will be speedily deleted?
Unsourced information has no place on the encyclopaedia, and the person introducing the information is best placed to know where he got it from. OK, this idea is not a panacea - it doesn’t help reference up information already in the encyclopaedia, but it’d stop making the problem worse. Nor would it address the issue of editors making up false sources - but any regular editor doing that will soon be rumbled, and this issue is already around anyway.
Editors would soon get used to the new requirement - and it’d have the benefit of making all those RC and New Pages patrollers who currently do not improve the encyclopaedia one jot (they merely prevent it from degrading) actually help improve the project by enforcing proper standards.
Ideally [[Wikipedia:Verifiability]] and [[Wikipedia:Cite sources]] would undergo a quick re-write to explain better how sources can be given, but that can easily be done. This idea would start to improve our quality immediately, and make a Siegenthaler repeat far less likely. Why not go for it?
Jon (jguk)
To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 12/15/05, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
A better approach is for all of us in our regular editing start gradually asking more often for a reference and do more deleting when it is not provided.
Heh. "Do you have a reference for that?" has always been the warcry of our more skilled edit warriours.
-- geni
geni wrote:
On 12/15/05, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
A better approach is for all of us in our regular editing start gradually asking more often for a reference and do more deleting when it is not provided.
Heh. "Do you have a reference for that?" has always been the warcry of our more skilled edit warriours.
Although it can be taken to a querulous extent (I remember how User:AI did this on Scientology-related articles), I can't say they're really *wrong* to do so and to encourage this. Ideally, a good editor should not add a new thing to an article without being able to say exactly where it came from.
- d.
Hi,
Ideally, a good editor should not add a new thing to an article without being able to say exactly where it came from.
What would be good is if we started by forcing people to specify, in broad terms, where things came from. But we didn't punish them for choosing bad sources - we would just fix it later. But at least you would know that the original writer thought it was a) common knowledge, b) personal experience, c) read it somewhere but don't remember where, d) heard it on TV, e) actually know the source, but it's dubious, f) actually know the source and it's reliable. Currently we're basically saying, if it's not f), don't bother telling us. Whereas the great majority of additions are probably in a)-d), and are being added with no source at all.
Currently we just don't know how unsourced we really are, or where the hell all those millions of edits actually came from.
Steve
Well, there is a good reason I don't read most of your posts. This nonsense is a good illustration of why. Of course the POV fakers are always asking for a reference. When it is provided, they delete it anyway with some lame excuse. Your point, I suppose, is that we should not attempt to reference the information in articles or ask for sources because the situation might be gamed by those who are editing in bad faith.
My suggestion, which is Wikipedia policy, is that references should be provided for the information you add to articles and that same standard ought to be gently applied to the editing of others.
Fred
On Dec 15, 2005, at 7:57 AM, geni wrote:
On 12/15/05, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
A better approach is for all of us in our regular editing start gradually asking more often for a reference and do more deleting when it is not provided.
Heh. "Do you have a reference for that?" has always been the warcry of our more skilled edit warriours.
-- geni _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
When I do serious editing I am usually working from a book or newspaper article and I have the reference at hand. It would often be very hard for someone else to find that passage just going from whatever I put into a Wikipedia article. So it is easy to put in exact references.
I, by contrast, almost never do such editing, and often work with articles of low quality (eg, in the fields of skiing, snowboarding, rock climbing, computer games...). There is often a lot that can be done to improve the article by restructing, rewriting, removing POV or adding snippets of general information - even with limited or no knowledge of the subject. People like me would probably throw their hands in the air and stop working overnight if required to find references for everything.
The thing is, for many people, editing is *fun*. I actually honestly gain pleasure from taking an unstructured 1000 word article and turning it into a 500 word structured one. Finding references is *work*. If you know something to be true, to find a reputable refernce to back you up is simply hard work in many cases. "no original research" says that if something is true, it should be easy to find a reputable reference - well, it isn't always.
There really should be different sourcing guidelines for different fields in Wikipedia - popular culture is just "different" to history, science or geography.
I also suspect that a guideline could say somewhere that if it's possible to verify something on google, then that may be good enough in some circumstances. As opposed to making a claim that cannot be verified even by someone searching the entire internet.
Steve
"Steve Bennett" wrote
"no original research" says that if something is true, it should be easy to find a reputable reference - well, it isn't always.
Agree - it's an academic model but even in intensely-covered areas of academia there can be things that are known, and known to be known, without people knowing why they are known (called 'folklore'). So it is a bit simplistic.
Charles
Steve Bennett wrote:
The thing is, for many people, editing is *fun*. I actually honestly gain pleasure from taking an unstructured 1000 word article and turning it into a 500 word structured one. Finding references is *work*. If you know something to be true, to find a reputable refernce to back you up is simply hard work in many cases. "no original research" says that if something is true, it should be easy to find a reputable reference - well, it isn't always.
I sometimes write something off the top of my head then Google for any tolerable reference that'll do for the moment ;-)
There really should be different sourcing guidelines for different fields in Wikipedia - popular culture is just "different" to history, science or geography.
Some sort of referencing should be possible. For TV or movie synopses, the text itself as an implicit reference is obvious and sufficient, for example.
I also suspect that a guideline could say somewhere that if it's possible to verify something on google, then that may be good enough in some circumstances. As opposed to making a claim that cannot be verified even by someone searching the entire internet.
If there's nothing else, that's fine again IMO. Any usable reference is better than none.
(Though that's not to say that really crappy references will do just because they're on the net somewhere. One has to use that thing called "editorial judgement.")
- d.
Some sort of referencing should be possible. For TV or movie synopses, the text itself as an implicit reference is obvious and sufficient, for example.
How far do you want to extend this? For computer games, is unreferenced description of characters ok? What about of cheats and secrets? Of songs, is discussion of lyrics ok? What about chord changes? Etc.
The big question: When is an unreferenced text better than no text?
Steve
"Steve Bennett" stevage@gmail.com wrote in message news:000301c601df$013a2380$ea01a8c0@minou...
Some sort of referencing should be possible. For TV or movie synopses, the text itself as an implicit reference is obvious and sufficient, for example.
How far do you want to extend this? For computer games, is unreferenced description of characters ok? What about of cheats and secrets? Of songs, is discussion of lyrics ok? What about chord changes? Etc.
The big question: When is an unreferenced text better than no text?
When it provides enough information for someone else to find a citeable reference to back it up, or in the alternative to demosntrate satisfactorily that there is no such reference.
Maybe it's time that, instead of having to do everything, people were made comfortable acting in the roles of "editors" and "researchers": the former tidy up articles to make them readable, the latter back up articles to make them credible.
HTH HAND
Steve Bennett wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
Some sort of referencing should be possible. For TV or movie synopses, the text itself as an implicit reference is obvious and sufficient, for example.
How far do you want to extend this? For computer games, is unreferenced description of characters ok? What about of cheats and secrets? Of songs, is discussion of lyrics ok? What about chord changes? Etc. The big question: When is an unreferenced text better than no text?
Sorry, when I said "text" I meant the book, movie, TV show, etc, not the article text. (I'm obviously suffering a mild infection of academic jargon.)
And for the answer to your question, I'm going to say: editorial judgement. We can't Taylorise everything.
- d.
Steve Bennett wrote:
Some sort of referencing should be possible. For TV or movie synopses, the text itself as an implicit reference is obvious and sufficient, for example.
How far do you want to extend this? For computer games, is unreferenced description of characters ok? What about of cheats and secrets? Of songs, is discussion of lyrics ok? What about chord changes? Etc.
The big question: When is an unreferenced text better than no text?
All this establishes is that there is no single solution that fits all situations.
Ec
David Gerard wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
There really should be different sourcing guidelines for different fields in Wikipedia - popular culture is just "different" to history, science or geography.
Some sort of referencing should be possible. For TV or movie synopses, the text itself as an implicit reference is obvious and sufficient, for example.
To some extent we can make use of "standard" references. The Internet Movie Data Base is a good example for movies, but that won't work for everything. Many subjects, however, are more controversial and the standards there need to be more stringent .
I also suspect that a guideline could say somewhere that if it's possible to verify something on google, then that may be good enough in some circumstances. As opposed to making a claim that cannot be verified even by someone searching the entire internet.
If there's nothing else, that's fine again IMO. Any usable reference is better than none.
(Though that's not to say that really crappy references will do just because they're on the net somewhere. One has to use that thing called "editorial judgement.")
Editorial judgement is important. Google is really a mixed blessing on this. Simply saying that something gets some number of Google hits is not enough. One needs to make a critical evaluation of those linked sites. One needs to distinguish between an academic study and somebody's blog.. Speaking as a person for whom book collecting is an addiction I have many references that I can use, but that is not convenient for many people. The first versions of material may not be perfect, and the verifying material may not be perfect. When material is challenged there must be reasonable time its supporters to find verification.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Editorial judgement is important. Google is really a mixed blessing on this. Simply saying that something gets some number of Google hits is not enough. One needs to make a critical evaluation of those linked sites. One needs to distinguish between an academic study and somebody's blog..
We can write guidelines and guidelines and guidelines, and no-one will care except the writers or someone looking for a stick to beat their opponent on the wiki with - because you can't Taylorise clue.
(When was the last time you read the Manual of Style through? Me neither.)
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Editorial judgement is important. Google is really a mixed blessing on this. Simply saying that something gets some number of Google hits is not enough. One needs to make a critical evaluation of those linked sites. One needs to distinguish between an academic study and somebody's blog..
We can write guidelines and guidelines and guidelines, and no-one will care except the writers or someone looking for a stick to beat their opponent on the wiki with - because you can't Taylorise clue.
(When was the last time you read the Manual of Style through? Me neither.)
One could begin with Taylorizing the Taylorizations.
The Manual of Style is great for those interested in an encyclopedia of guidelines.
Ec
care except the writers or someone looking for a stick to beat their opponent on the wiki with - because you can't Taylorise clue.
(When was the last time you read the Manual of Style through? Me neither.)
One could begin with Taylorizing the Taylorizations.
[[Taylorize]] redirected to [[Frederick Winslow Taylor]], and google wasn't much help either. What is "Taylorization"?
Steve
Ray Saintonge wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
We can write guidelines and guidelines and guidelines, and no-one will care except the writers or someone looking for a stick to beat their opponent on the wiki with - because you can't Taylorise clue. (When was the last time you read the Manual of Style through? Me neither.)
One could begin with Taylorizing the Taylorizations.
Heh. I have started in a slow way tightening up some of our ridiculously bloated, opaquely-written and special-case-riddled guideline and policy pages; I look forward to the time to really go the hack on the MoS. I think it could be one-third the length without losing a single useful detail. Heck, someone might even want to read it for reasons other than querulousness.
The Manual of Style is great for those interested in an encyclopedia of guidelines.
LOL!
- d.
On 12/17/05, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
Heh. I have started in a slow way tightening up some of our ridiculously bloated, opaquely-written and special-case-riddled guideline and policy pages; I look forward to the time to really go the hack on the MoS. I think it could be one-third the length without losing a single useful detail. Heck, someone might even want to read it for reasons other than querulousness.
I believe way too much of our policy and guidelines is made up of rules devised for problematic cases. "Bad cases make bad law," it is said, and our rules are made up that way a bit more than I like.
-Matt
David Gerard wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
We can write guidelines and guidelines and guidelines, and no-one will care except the writers or someone looking for a stick to beat their opponent on the wiki with - because you can't Taylorise clue. (When was the last time you read the Manual of Style through? Me neither.)
One could begin with Taylorizing the Taylorizations.
Heh. I have started in a slow way tightening up some of our ridiculously bloated, opaquely-written and special-case-riddled guideline and policy pages; I look forward to the time to really go the hack on the MoS. I think it could be one-third the length without losing a single useful detail. Heck, someone might even want to read it for reasons other than querulousness.
I have tried similar things at Wiktionary, where I often trace a wide circle of "What links here" that ends up where I started. The problem is not just with the people writing imaginative new policies, but also with individuals who come along with a great plan to reorganize everything. They start with a lot of enthusiasm, but half way through their project they fall off the edge of the earth never to be seen again. Then at least two others develop contradictory policies on the same thing on two different pages; this entitles newbies to use whichever one they found first to justify whatever action they want to take. One never knows when one will be deleting someone's pet policy>
Being bureaucrat and the most senior active editor in the project buys me a certain amount of sin points, but I would prefer to limit that kind of boldness to situations which really matter. Dear Abby, what would you do? :-)
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
Heh. I have started in a slow way tightening up some of our ridiculously bloated, opaquely-written and special-case-riddled guideline and policy pages; I look forward to the time to really go the hack on the MoS. I think it could be one-third the length without losing a single useful detail. Heck, someone might even want to read it for reasons other than querulousness.
I have tried similar things at Wiktionary, where I often trace a wide circle of "What links here" that ends up where I started. The problem is not just with the people writing imaginative new policies, but also with individuals who come along with a great plan to reorganize everything. They start with a lot of enthusiasm, but half way through their project they fall off the edge of the earth never to be seen again. Then at least two others develop contradictory policies on the same thing on two different pages; this entitles newbies to use whichever one they found first to justify whatever action they want to take. One never knows when one will be deleting someone's pet policy> Being bureaucrat and the most senior active editor in the project buys me a certain amount of sin points, but I would prefer to limit that kind of boldness to situations which really matter. Dear Abby, what would you do? :-)
Find people you can sanity-check with. Then start shooting. If you make a mistake, take it back and make good - this buys a lot of leeway. Interpret everything per goal, e.g. "We're here to write an encyclopedia".
- d.
Steve Bennett wrote:
The thing is, for many people, editing is *fun*. I actually honestly gain pleasure from taking an unstructured 1000 word article and turning it into a 500 word structured one. Finding references is *work*. If you know something to be true, to find a reputable refernce to back you up is simply hard work in many cases. "no original research" says that if something is true, it should be easy to find a reputable reference - well, it isn't always.
If you're not changing any facts, then there's nothing to worry about, go have fun. But how sure are you about that snippet of general information you want to add? There have been a couple times where I was *sure* about some claim, and yet it turned out my memory was faulty. There were probably readers of the Seigenthaler article that probably thought "hmm, didn't know he was implicated in the assassination, but I remember seeing the name when reading about it one time", and so it wouldn't occur to them to be suspicious of the prankster's claim.
I actually enjoy tracking down the sources of facts, and many of my edits are simply to add a reference or two. So if you do the wordsmithing (which I tend to find tedious), and flag anything that seems true but is unsourced, I'll come along later and see if I can come up with something to cite.
Stan
Hi,
If you're not changing any facts, then there's nothing to worry about, go have fun. But how sure are you about that snippet of general information you want to add? There have
Exactly. Often I'm "fairly sure". Sometimes it's "on the balance of probabilities". Sometimes there's text already there that seems doubtful, and I'm inclined to add a hedge word like "possibly".
I actually enjoy tracking down the sources of facts, and many of my edits are simply to add a reference or two. So if you do the wordsmithing (which I tend to find tedious), and flag anything that seems true but is unsourced, I'll come along later and see if I can come up with something to cite.
It's a deal. What's your proposed mechanism for "flagging" unsourced material?
Steve
I quite agree, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Wilkes %2C_Wyss_and_Onefortyone/Proposed_decision#Sources_for_popular_culture
There are different ways of working, I follow your way too. But I don't argue when someone who has done research contradicts me.
Fred
On Dec 15, 2005, at 8:05 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:
When I do serious editing I am usually working from a book or newspaper article and I have the reference at hand. It would often be very hard for someone else to find that passage just going from whatever I put into a Wikipedia article. So it is easy to put in exact references.
I, by contrast, almost never do such editing, and often work with articles of low quality (eg, in the fields of skiing, snowboarding, rock climbing, computer games...). There is often a lot that can be done to improve the article by restructing, rewriting, removing POV or adding snippets of general information - even with limited or no knowledge of the subject. People like me would probably throw their hands in the air and stop working overnight if required to find references for everything.
The thing is, for many people, editing is *fun*. I actually honestly gain pleasure from taking an unstructured 1000 word article and turning it into a 500 word structured one. Finding references is *work*. If you know something to be true, to find a reputable refernce to back you up is simply hard work in many cases. "no original research" says that if something is true, it should be easy to find a reputable reference - well, it isn't always.
There really should be different sourcing guidelines for different fields in Wikipedia - popular culture is just "different" to history, science or geography.
I also suspect that a guideline could say somewhere that if it's possible to verify something on google, then that may be good enough in some circumstances. As opposed to making a claim that cannot be verified even by someone searching the entire internet.
Steve
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Steve Bennett wrote:
<snip>
I also suspect that a guideline could say somewhere that if it's possible to verify something on google, then that may be good enough in some circumstances. As opposed to making a claim that cannot be verified even by someone searching the entire internet.
Steve
Er...are you suggesting that it's too much to ask for you to even just cite a website that can verify the information? (Presuming you know the information from experience and not from another source.) After all, websites are acceptable sources - better something than nothing. If you add something from memory, just Google it a bit and cite the most reliable-looking website as the source. Better than nothing, as I said.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
Hi,
Er...are you suggesting that it's too much to ask for you to even just cite a website that can verify the information? (Presuming you know the information from experience and not from another source.) After all, websites are acceptable sources - better something than nothing. If you add something from memory, just Google it a bit and cite the most reliable-looking website as the source. Better than nothing, as I said.
Yeah, for me it's "too much". Mostly because, as I said, I'm frequently working on very low quality articles just attempting to improve their coverage a bit by adding a sentence or two. Or just wordsmithing existing unreferenced material. Obviously going the extra mile and referencing is even better, but it's sort of a "don't look a gift horse in the mouth" kind of situation, isn't it?
Incidentally, googling is getting harder with the number of wikipedia clones out there. Even adding "-wikipedia" isn't foolproof. I wouldn't mind a solution to that particular problem.
Steve
Fred Bauder wrote:
A better approach is for all of us in our regular editing start gradually asking more often for a reference and do more deleting when it is not provided.
When I do serious editing I am usually working from a book or newspaper article and I have the reference at hand. It would often be very hard for someone else to find that passage just going from whatever I put into a Wikipedia article. So it is easy to put in exact references.
That does not end the matter, but it is a start.
In other words, a good first step is for the experienced editors to be an example.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Fred Bauder wrote:
A better approach is for all of us in our regular editing start gradually asking more often for a reference and do more deleting when it is not provided. When I do serious editing I am usually working from a book or newspaper article and I have the reference at hand. It would often be very hard for someone else to find that passage just going from whatever I put into a Wikipedia article. So it is easy to put in exact references.
That does not end the matter, but it is a start.
In other words, a good first step is for the experienced editors to be an example.
Yep. It can only be encouraged by making it into a cultural expectation.
- d.
Jon wrote:
Is there any reason why we don’t introduce immediately a rule that says all new information added to an article must be sourced or referenced or the edit will automatically be reverted? And any new articles must be sourced or referenced within two hours, say, of their creation, or will be speedily deleted?
To some extent, that's quietly happening, both reversions of unsourced adds, and edits that include references. I'd just as soon not try to formalize beyond the warning that is now on the edit screen - a sudden deluge of plausible-looking but faked-up sources would be a major problem for RC and watchlist patrol.
Stan
Stan Shebs wrote:
Jon wrote:
Is there any reason why we don’t introduce immediately a rule that says all new information added to an article must be sourced or referenced or the edit will automatically be reverted? And any new articles must be sourced or referenced within two hours, say, of their creation, or will be speedily deleted?
To some extent, that's quietly happening, both reversions of unsourced adds, and edits that include references. I'd just as soon not try to formalize beyond the warning that is now on the edit screen - a sudden deluge of plausible-looking but faked-up sources would be a major problem for RC and watchlist patrol.
That would be worse than no references at all.
Ec