On Sun, Dec 12, 2004 at 01:30:24AM +0000, wikien-l-request@Wikipedia.org wrote:
What we need is to encourage a culture of including references.
I'm happy if I can get a good book or two referenced, and an external link or so to corroborate. I am totally against having to footnote everything. That is a lame way to have to write - training wheels for Ph.D. students.
Basic point for me, in fact becoming fundamental: WP is not an academic institution, and can't afford 'guild restrictions'. Leaving the question of what it is.
I understand your objection, and note another one from a different perspective: Adam Carr, a history academic who has been a profilic and high-quality contributor to the Australia-related articles, notes that often his work is the distillation of hundreds of different things he has read on the topic. This is particularly the case with articles on broader topics. Trying to footnote all of this is very, very difficult.
Notwithstanding this, referencing is *essential*. How else are we supposed to fact-check the Wikipedia?
Robert Graham Merkel wrote
Notwithstanding this, referencing is *essential*. How else are we supposed to fact-check the Wikipedia?
I'd answer that in several ways:
(i) citing references for things not hard to check independently is not necessarily important or useful (the Queen Victoria article currently on the Main Page doesn't need to supply a reference for her dates); (ii) anyone can use a talk page to ask for references and start a discussion on sources.
The conclusion from that much is that referencing should be targeted. It is best if it goes to the crux of an argument.
(iii) I recently added a [[J. H. Hexter]] page - he it was who got the historians talking about 'splitters' and 'lumpers' of source material.
Conclusion is that references are not solely about supporting facts or enabling fact-checking. They are partly to do with how you use your highlighter pen on the background material.
(iv) I found the [[objectivity (journalism)]] page interesting when I saw it (a few changes since that), though not necessarily because I entirely agreed.
It is sometimes suggested that American and European journalism differ on the place of fact-checking. (Certainly UK newspapers are quite free-wheeling, and are not necessarily the worse - at least they aren't bland, though often bad too.)
Anyway, WP should try to get along with principles like Assume Good Faith and collegiality, as well as style guides. Editors of WP pages should be assumed in the first instance to have reasons for writng as they do, and can be asked politely to support unclear and contentious points.
Charles
[Someone wrote]
What we need is to encourage a culture of including references.
[Apologies that this appears to a reply to Robert Merkel, when in fact it references a parent post - I cannot locate the original]
May I plug then {{Template:Book reference}}?
At the moment only a hundred or so pages use it. However, if the number of references using this template grows then it would become a great starting point for an automated conversion to using a references tab as mooted in other posts.
I am considering also introducing {{Web reference}} and a series of {{Journal reference}}.
Pete
Sounds like a good idea. Although I am familiar with the usage of references, every time I have to write up a reference section, I need [[Wikipedia:Cite sources]] open in another tab.
John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])
Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
[Someone wrote]
What we need is to encourage a culture of including references.
[Apologies that this appears to a reply to Robert Merkel, when in fact it references a parent post - I cannot locate the original]
May I plug then {{Template:Book reference}}?
At the moment only a hundred or so pages use it. However, if the number of references using this template grows then it would become a great starting point for an automated conversion to using a references tab as mooted in other posts.
I am considering also introducing {{Web reference}} and a series of {{Journal reference}}.
Pete