Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2006 23:07:53 -0500
That's true, but is also misleading. You don't see those references in the *end product*.
Oh? Take a look at the article on "Radioactivity" in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition.
It contains fifty-four inline references. It also mentions five "general treatises."
And the stuff in between is credited to a known individual, "E. Ru." with the Encyclopedia Britannica editors implicitly vouching both for his identity and his competence. However, if I want to check his competence for yourself, I flip to the front of volume 22, p. vii and look up E. Ru. who happens to be some guy named "Ernest Rutherford, F. R. S., D. Sc. LL. D., Ph. D., Langworthy Professor of Physics, University of Manchester, Nobel Prize for Chemistry, 1908, Author of Radio-Activity; Radio-Activity Transformations; etc."
So, depending on what you think of his character or his credentials, I can judge whether or not to rely on the stuff that's in between those citations.
A point that people seem to continually miss in comparing Wikipedia to other scholarly activities is that, to the extent that our contributors are less identifiable and less authoritative than those of the Encyclopedia Britannica Eleventh Edition or scholarly works, we _need_ to have _denser_ citations than these endeavors. For example, our article on "Radioactivity" ought to have _more_ than fifty-four inline citations.
It presently has...
... _zero_ references. No inline references, nothing like the five "general treatises" E. Ru. provides (i.e. no "references" or "bibliography" section). Seven "see alsos" and seven "external links."
Most recent edits are by Bovineone, KaiserbBot, FocalPoint, Peyre, and 165.107.9.47. Not obvious who their real-world identities are, but even assuming you take their user pages at face value, which I do, their credentials and achievements are: "I currently live in Austin, Texas, but I am originally from Pasadena, California" (and has a barnstar); a bot with an emergency shutoff button; "One more user who believes that Wikipedia is a really really good idea;" "Wikipedia does not have a user page with this exact name;" and no account.
For all I know, 165.107.9.47, _may_ be a Nobel Laureate, but... should I trust the unreferenced material in this article as much as I trust the unreferenced material in the Britannica article credited to E. Ru.?
On 10/2/06, Daniel P. B. Smith wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
Oh? Take a look at the article on "Radioactivity" in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition.
It contains fifty-four inline references. It also mentions five "general treatises."
And the stuff in between is credited to a known individual, "E. Ru." with the Encyclopedia Britannica editors implicitly vouching both for his identity and his competence. However, if I want to check his competence for yourself, I flip to the front of volume 22, p. vii and look up E. Ru. who happens to be some guy named "Ernest Rutherford, F. R. S., D. Sc. LL. D., Ph. D., Langworthy Professor of Physics, University of Manchester, Nobel Prize for Chemistry, 1908, Author of Radio-Activity; Radio-Activity Transformations; etc."
That is an exceptional example most were written by somewhat lesser individuals
For all I know, 165.107.9.47, _may_ be a Nobel Laureate, but... should I trust the unreferenced material in this article as much as I trust the unreferenced material in the Britannica article credited to E. Ru.?
Depends. Given at the point he must have writen it Rutherford would either have been just pre his atomic model or just post it. Since his model of the atom doesn't really work and at that point he hadn't considered neutrons I might go for something a bit more up to date.
Sorry for top posting, but I just wanted to say that I agree with Daniel completely here. Sources are critical.
We have implicitly taken a stance with the world: we don't care about the _credentials_ of the authors, we care about the _quality of the work_. This means: we don't just say "trust me, I am a Nobel Prize winner"... we can't, because we mostly are not. Instead we say "Trust us, we cite our sources, we use rational arguments, we write clearly and neutrally, and we show our working."
(In American English, this is "show our work" but I got the phrase from David Gerard, who always says "show our working".)
--Jimbo
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 2006 23:07:53 -0500
That's true, but is also misleading. You don't see those references in the *end product*.
Oh? Take a look at the article on "Radioactivity" in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition.
It contains fifty-four inline references. It also mentions five "general treatises."
And the stuff in between is credited to a known individual, "E. Ru." with the Encyclopedia Britannica editors implicitly vouching both for his identity and his competence. However, if I want to check his competence for yourself, I flip to the front of volume 22, p. vii and look up E. Ru. who happens to be some guy named "Ernest Rutherford, F. R. S., D. Sc. LL. D., Ph. D., Langworthy Professor of Physics, University of Manchester, Nobel Prize for Chemistry, 1908, Author of Radio-Activity; Radio-Activity Transformations; etc."
So, depending on what you think of his character or his credentials, I can judge whether or not to rely on the stuff that's in between those citations.
A point that people seem to continually miss in comparing Wikipedia to other scholarly activities is that, to the extent that our contributors are less identifiable and less authoritative than those of the Encyclopedia Britannica Eleventh Edition or scholarly works, we _need_ to have _denser_ citations than these endeavors. For example, our article on "Radioactivity" ought to have _more_ than fifty-four inline citations.
It presently has...
... _zero_ references. No inline references, nothing like the five "general treatises" E. Ru. provides (i.e. no "references" or "bibliography" section). Seven "see alsos" and seven "external links."
Most recent edits are by Bovineone, KaiserbBot, FocalPoint, Peyre, and 165.107.9.47. Not obvious who their real-world identities are, but even assuming you take their user pages at face value, which I do, their credentials and achievements are: "I currently live in Austin, Texas, but I am originally from Pasadena, California" (and has a barnstar); a bot with an emergency shutoff button; "One more user who believes that Wikipedia is a really really good idea;" "Wikipedia does not have a user page with this exact name;" and no account.
For all I know, 165.107.9.47, _may_ be a Nobel Laureate, but... should I trust the unreferenced material in this article as much as I trust the unreferenced material in the Britannica article credited to E. Ru.?
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On 10/4/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote: <snip>
Instead we say "Trust us, we cite our sources, we use rational arguments, we write clearly and neutrally, and we show our working."
Somebody should put that on a bumber-sticker. Sums up wikipedia perfectly.
--Oskar
On 04/10/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Sorry for top posting, but I just wanted to say that I agree with Daniel completely here. Sources are critical.
Agreed, But should we be sourcing the *wikipedia*, or should we be sourcing the *article*?
Because that's not the same thing.
In my view, sourcing each article like it is a standalone entity is a throwback to the dead-tree encyclopedia where cross-referencing is very painful indeed. With hypertexting it is quite possible to construct an article that doesn't suffer for lack of references at all (or very few)- because each paragraph summarises the position of other article(s) and links to them. The linked-to articles contain numerous references supporting the summary and their own article.
And this style of article is very useful for people to learn a new area- the summary article is generally a lot easier to read than one with the detailed, referenced articles. But right now, a readable summary article cannot reach FA, because it doesn't have enough references!!!
Whilst you *can* duplicate information around the wikipedia; that makes the wikipedia more brittle- for example when something changes, you would find it hard to track down all the changes that need to be made.
So the basic unit of a hypertext encyclopedia is not the article, it's the encyclopedia. In a hypertext entity like the wikipedia, I think we need to source the *wikipedia*, not the article.
--Jimbo
On 10/4/06, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
In my view, sourcing each article like it is a standalone entity is a throwback to the dead-tree encyclopedia where cross-referencing is very painful indeed. With hypertexting it is quite possible to construct an article that doesn't suffer for lack of references at all (or very few)- because each paragraph summarises the position of other article(s) and links to them. The linked-to articles contain numerous references supporting the summary and their own article.
I prefer to think that Wikipedia content is not limited to use on the internet--if I want to print out an article for personal use or for distribution, I don't want to have to print out every wikilinked article as well. There have also been attempts to turn wikipedia articles into books (WikiReaders, etc.); these would all be unsourced to some extent unless every article that was wikified in the summary article (and probably several more levels, since there are different levels of "summary") is included.
Furthermore, putting refences on the most specific articles puts the burden on the reader to go and find the sources of the information found in the summary articles. Sometimes it might not be clear--for example, if in the [[Welding]] article I'm talking about welding power supplies used in arc welding, should the reader go to [[welding power supply]] for the sources or to [[arc welding]]? Or both? Unless there's a consistent system for this (which I doubt is possible), the reader will not easily find the citation. And what's the point of a citation if the reader can't find it?
Nathaniel