At 03:47 AM 6/19/2007, David Goodman wrote:
About 25% of the WP articles cannot be properly sourced without access to one of the about 250 existing research libraries (in the english-speaking world), and perhaps a third of those can be done in only one of the top half of those, the ones with high quality pint collections. Most WPedians clearly do not have such access, and most of those who do are clearly unaccustomed to using it for such purposes. Those who can do this, are not likely to assume the burden of sourcing a few hundred thosand articles in 5 days. And it is not just finding sources. It is necessary to find multiple sources in a thorough way, and see what part of the article can be supported, and then do the secondary research necessary to rewrite the article. How many WP editors know how to do this properly? How many of the enthusiasts working on popular culture actually know how to do an adequate job filling the gaps there?
Right, but I would argue access and skill are not the issue... we have plenty of editors near libraries, and most of them are pretty smart folks, too. The issue is simply that it's a huge amount of work. Writing a good, medium-length article takes a couple of days maybe if you are familiar with the topic. Looking up all the references in a library is going to take weeks.
Chris
Chris Lüer schreef:
Looking up all the references in a library is going to take weeks.
Eliminating unreferenced articles does not mean finding sources for every fact. It just needs one for each article.
And if you really cannot find a single reference, just merge the content into a related article and redirect the original. No loss of information, and it's now in a referenced article, so it will not be deleted.
Eugene
At 02:58 PM 6/19/2007, Eugene van der Pijll wrote:
Eliminating unreferenced articles does not mean finding sources for every fact. It just needs one for each article.
And if you really cannot find a single reference, just merge the content into a related article and redirect the original. No loss of information, and it's now in a referenced article, so it will not be deleted.
Until someone starts the Elimination of Unreferenced Sentences Drive... ;)
Chris
This is what people may actually do, and it of course makes a farce of the whole thing. At that level of referencing, I could probably do about 50 an hour, on any subject about which books have been written,
With one approach, I do not need a library or even Google: Looking at Category:Articles_lacking_sources for July 06, I find Alpinist Unit. Its a unit of the IDF, I go tho the Israeli Defense Forces article, a general book is listed, I copy the reference. Should take about 30 seconds. I then go to the category for IDF, and add the same reference to each of them.
At the next level up, using another approach, I take a recent biochemistry textbook, and I go through it systematically, adding a ref for every term I encounter that has a WP article. (I could even put in page numbers), (most in that subject will have a ref, however, but I could do the same with a History of English Literature.)
I could do it even more efficiently: I search for "unreferenced biology", take a suitable advanced encyclopedia, and ...
With a good semi automatic bot, using online sources only, I could probably do it two times as fast. It could even be completely automated after selected the book.
But who does this help? Anyone reading the article can do this just as well when reading it. If I am to put in the best readily available good references for each article at an appropriate level of specificity, that's another matter.
On 6/19/07, Chris Lüer chris@zandria.net wrote:
At 02:58 PM 6/19/2007, Eugene van der Pijll wrote:
Eliminating unreferenced articles does not mean finding sources for every fact. It just needs one for each article.
And if you really cannot find a single reference, just merge the content into a related article and redirect the original. No loss of information, and it's now in a referenced article, so it will not be deleted.
Until someone starts the Elimination of Unreferenced Sentences Drive... ;)
Chris
David Goodman schreef:
At 02:58 PM 6/19/2007, Eugene van der Pijll wrote:
Eliminating unreferenced articles does not mean finding sources for every fact. It just needs one for each article.
This is what people may actually do, and it of course makes a farce of the whole thing.
Yes.
At that level of referencing, I could probably do about 50 an hour, on any subject about which books have been written,
Indeed.
But who does this help?
It helps two groups of people: * The editors who think that every article should have at least one reference or they should be DELETED!!1!!!1! * The readers who want to read an article that would otherwise have been deleted by the editors who think that every article should have at least one reference.
Sourcing like this is not about improving the quality of the article, but about keeping useful knowledge available for those who need it.
gr,Eugene
David Goodman wrote:
This is what people may actually do, and it of course makes a farce of the whole thing... With one approach, I do not need a library or even Google... At the next level up, using another approach, I take a recent biochemistry textbook, and I go through it systematically... With a good semi automatic bot, using online sources only, I could probably do it two times as fast. It could even be completely automated after selected the book.
WP:BEANS! WP:BEANS! WP:BEANS!
(Seriously, I won't be a bit surprised if tools like this start appearing over the next year or so.)
But who does this help? Anyone reading the article can do this just as well when reading it.
Precisely. But the urge for mindless automation is strong (as witness the predilection for bots that automatically add a nice, templateized, "personal" welcome to the talk page of each new editor).
On 6/19/07, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
This is what people may actually do, and it of course makes a farce of the whole thing. At that level of referencing, I could probably do about 50 an hour, on any subject about which books have been written,
With one approach, I do not need a library or even Google: Looking at Category:Articles_lacking_sources for July 06, I find Alpinist Unit. Its a unit of the IDF, I go tho the Israeli Defense Forces article, a general book is listed, I copy the reference. Should take about 30 seconds. I then go to the category for IDF, and add the same reference to each of them.
At the next level up, using another approach, I take a recent biochemistry textbook, and I go through it systematically, adding a ref for every term I encounter that has a WP article. (I could even put in page numbers), (most in that subject will have a ref, however, but I could do the same with a History of English Literature.)
I could do it even more efficiently: I search for "unreferenced biology", take a suitable advanced encyclopedia, and ...
With a good semi automatic bot, using online sources only, I could probably do it two times as fast. It could even be completely automated after selected the book.
But who does this help? Anyone reading the article can do this just as well when reading it. If I am to put in the best readily available good references for each article at an appropriate level of specificity, that's another matter.
On 6/19/07, Chris Lüer chris@zandria.net wrote:
At 02:58 PM 6/19/2007, Eugene van der Pijll wrote:
Eliminating unreferenced articles does not mean finding sources for every fact. It just needs one for each article.
And if you really cannot find a single reference, just merge the content into a related article and redirect the original. No loss of information, and it's now in a referenced article, so it will not be deleted.
Until someone starts the Elimination of Unreferenced Sentences Drive... ;)
Chris-- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
I could simply add my botany book as a reference to almost any general article on botany, and many higher taxa organism articles, but it doesn't make it a reference to that article.
I don't think adding references to articles that aren't really references to that article is an improvement over unreferenced articles. This is an area where editors can be rather set: they think the reference says what they see, but it doesn't, yet they want to keep the reference in the article.
I had one editor cite 3 sources that didn't say what he claimed, and he was not letting any of them or his statement go.
Let's not encourage this!
KP