First, and example, and then a question/suggestion. If you get bored with my example, please continue anyway to my question/suggestion. :)
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/10/15/how_many_times_mu...
Some are easy, of course, like the Wikipedia entry claiming that the word blackboard ‘‘is now perceived by some as being ’politically incorrect’ in the United Kingdom.’’ ‘‘Citation needed,’’ a parenthesis cautioned. Indeed: a Nexis search of UK publications found some 30 blackboards in a week, against just three chalkboards.
This is a quote from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_change
Our full text reads:
Political correctness is a real or perceived attempt to refine or restrict language and terms used in public discussion to those deemed acceptable or appropriate. For example "blackboard" is now perceived
by >some as being "politically incorrect" in the United Kingdom, [citation >needed] and so teachers are instructed to call it a "chalkboard" >instead.
The tag was added here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Semantic_change&diff=43364581&...
So from March 12 until now, we have a request that this dubious tidbit be sourced, with no movement.
I think that clearly this bit should have been sourced or removed a long time ago.
-----
Is there any way we could have a date-stamped fact tag? Which would put such things into a category or other similar page? The purpose would be to provide a mechanism for people to find *older* examples of fact tags, in order to go ahead and remove them.
I would recommend that anything like this for which no citation appears within 7 days be removed or edited in some fashion to remove the need.
--Jimbo
On 10/15/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Is there any way we could have a date-stamped fact tag? Which would put such things into a category or other similar page?
Yes would need to be {{subst:fact}} though
The purpose would be
to provide a mechanism for people to find *older* examples of fact tags, in order to go ahead and remove them.
I would recommend that anything like this for which no citation appears within 7 days be removed or edited in some fashion to remove the need.
Would need to be done by bot or we would need a way to clone wikignomes. We don't have the manpower.
On 10/15/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/15/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Is there any way we could have a date-stamped fact tag? Which would put such things into a category or other similar page?
Yes would need to be {{subst:fact}} though
No it wouldn't. You could have a template like {{factdate|date=somedate}} whcih puts the article in a "Category:Unsourced statements from {{{date}}}". If we want to be sure that this works we could have a template which you subst in that is replaced with {{factdate|date={{{subst:CURRENTDATE}}}}} (or whatever the name of the variable is).
This is certainly technically feasible without having to subst the entire template in (which would make it much harder to edit some articles).
--Oskar
This could be fairly simple. Just change {{fact}} to be just like {{prod}}, where you subst it and it comes out as dated prod (or in this case, factdate or dated fact or whatever) and the date. We could use the same Tawkerbot code as used in the prod conversion to convert fact, and we could just add it to the subst list normally after that. It would probably be best to do it by month though, rather than date, because of the sheer amount of them, and it would likely create yet another huge backlog like wikify and cleanup, though the current category is worse AND unorganized, so it would be better to have people actually work on it, instead of it just sitting there. The one problem that I can see is that if the article has several tags from different dates (even if they're relatively sparse, a big article could have this problem), the entire category section would be filled with "Category:Articles with unsourced statements from [Month] [Year]" tags, drowning out everything else.
On 10/15/06, Oskar Sigvardsson oskarsigvardsson@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/15/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/15/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Is there any way we could have a date-stamped fact tag? Which would
put
such things into a category or other similar page?
Yes would need to be {{subst:fact}} though
No it wouldn't. You could have a template like {{factdate|date=somedate}} whcih puts the article in a "Category:Unsourced statements from {{{date}}}". If we want to be sure that this works we could have a template which you subst in that is replaced with {{factdate|date={{{subst:CURRENTDATE}}}}} (or whatever the name of the variable is).
This is certainly technically feasible without having to subst the entire template in (which would make it much harder to edit some articles).
--Oskar _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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geni stated for the record:
On 10/15/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
I would recommend that anything like this for which no citation appears within 7 days be removed or edited in some fashion to remove the need.
Would need to be done by bot or we would need a way to clone wikignomes. We don't have the manpower.
There are many of us who would eagerly remove great swathes of dubious {{fact}} if we could be sure that rabid admins wouldn't at best start a sterile edit war and at worst try to ban us for "vandalizing" their favorite campgrounds.
- -- Sean Barrett | Therapy is expensive. Popping sean@epoptic.com | bubble wrap is cheap. You choose.
On 10/15/06, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.com wrote:
There are many of us
Citation needed.
who would eagerly remove great swathes of dubious {{fact}} if we could be sure that rabid admins wouldn't at best start a sterile edit war and at worst try to ban us for "vandalizing" their favorite campgrounds.
Considering the number of pages that are no one's watchlist that should be fairly easy to avoid.
On 10/15/06, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.com wrote:
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geni stated for the record:
On 10/15/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
I would recommend that anything like this for which no citation appears within 7 days be removed or edited in some fashion to remove the need.
Would need to be done by bot or we would need a way to clone wikignomes. We don't have the manpower.
There are many of us who would eagerly remove great swathes of dubious {{fact}} if we could be sure that rabid admins wouldn't at best start a sterile edit war and at worst try to ban us for "vandalizing" their favorite campgrounds.
Sean Barrett | Therapy is expensive. Popping sean@epoptic.com | bubble wrap is cheap. You choose. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
iD8DBQFFMl8m/SVOiq2uhHMRAkOGAJ9gBGBqAIH3+sayd1s+4kEZ1iXrCACg4Dm+ p/RqoSPnDSQuMJVDxNggkvs= =ucY+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
You just have to alert the rabid admins who don't wan't these kind of unsourced statemets lying around to ban the people who keep adding them :P
geni wrote:
On 10/15/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Is there any way we could have a date-stamped fact tag?
...
Would need to be done by bot...
If I remember correctly, the last time I put a bare {cleanup} tag on an article (being too lazy to look up the preferred date-stamped version), a bot came along less than a day later and replaced the tag with the properly date-stamped version. So clearly we could use the same sort of bot here, if we wanted to.
That's Pearle, which would be an alternate way of doing things, where people write {{fact}} and it's changed by a bot to {{fact-date|Month Year}}, putting it in a datestamped category. It's easier for the typist than {{subst:fact}}, but even if they wrote {{fact}}, a substing bot is probably less complicated than Pearle, though it doesn't really make a difference. (Also, I promise you that I will not be helping to implement any of these changes; last time I did something like this I was blocked twice).
On 10/15/06, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
geni wrote:
On 10/15/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Is there any way we could have a date-stamped fact tag?
...
Would need to be done by bot...
If I remember correctly, the last time I put a bare {cleanup} tag on an article (being too lazy to look up the preferred date-stamped version), a bot came along less than a day later and replaced the tag with the properly date-stamped version. So clearly we could use the same sort of bot here, if we wanted to. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 10/16/06, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
If I remember correctly, the last time I put a bare {cleanup} tag on an article (being too lazy to look up the preferred date-stamped version), a bot came along less than a day later and replaced the tag with the properly date-stamped version. So clearly we could use the same sort of bot here, if we wanted to.
Problem it is one thing to put a mess of code at the top of an article and quite another to put it halfway through.
It wouldn't be that much longer. Right now it's {{fact}}, it would probably be changed to something like {{factdate|May 2006}}.
On 10/15/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/16/06, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
If I remember correctly, the last time I put a bare {cleanup} tag on an article (being too lazy to look up the preferred date-stamped version), a bot came along less than a day later and replaced the tag with the properly date-stamped version. So clearly we could use the same sort of bot here, if we wanted to.
Problem it is one thing to put a mess of code at the top of an article and quite another to put it halfway through.
-- geni _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
geni wrote:
On 10/16/06, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
If I remember correctly, the last time I put a bare {cleanup} tag on an article (being too lazy to look up the preferred date-stamped version), a bot came along less than a day later and replaced the tag with the properly date-stamped version. So clearly we could use the same sort of bot here, if we wanted to.
Problem it is one thing to put a mess of code at the top of an article and quite another to put it halfway through.
Come now. Unless a bot is trying to do section editing or something, it's got the entire text of an article available to it, so it's trivial to search the whole article for the template(s) to be edited. And it's not "a mess of code"; it's either a slightly-differently-named template, or the addition of a single parameter. This is no problem at all.
On 10/16/06, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
Come now. Unless a bot is trying to do section editing or something, it's got the entire text of an article available to it, so it's trivial to search the whole article for the template(s) to be edited. And it's not "a mess of code"; it's either a slightly-differently-named template, or the addition of a single parameter. This is no problem at all.
Hmmm yes I supose you could do it by creating templates like {{fact1610}} {{fact1710}} {{fact1810}} and so on. Might want a {{factindef}} for cases where people don't want the item removed.
On 10/16/06, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
geni wrote:
Hmmm yes I supose you could do it by creating templates like {{fact1610}} {{fact1710}} {{fact1810}} and so on.
Huh? I was thinking of something like {{fact|October 2006}}, by direct analogy with [[Template:Cleanup]].
{{Cleanup}} is a ticket to a year-long line. If we want to get these issues addressed with any kind of speed (and it's clear from the start of this thread that we do), any system that we come up with needs to be as unlike {{cleanup}} as possible.
Personally, I suspect that the only way to handle these things is to do them yourself. I long ago gave up on the notion of article tags being an effective way to get anything but the most trivial (and thus edit-count-building) maintenance work done.
Not true, cleanup also has a huge amount of articles, and while there's a backlog, there's also a lot of people working on it. Currently, [[Category:Articles with unsourced statements]] has a massive, totally disorganized backlog, and was actually deleted a couple months ago because it was so hopeless. A cleanup-like system would be a huge improvement, and allow us to take care of the ones that most need sourcing first.
On 10/16/06, Robth robth1@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/16/06, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
geni wrote:
Hmmm yes I supose you could do it by creating templates like {{fact1610}} {{fact1710}} {{fact1810}} and so on.
Huh? I was thinking of something like {{fact|October 2006}}, by direct analogy with [[Template:Cleanup]].
{{Cleanup}} is a ticket to a year-long line. If we want to get these issues addressed with any kind of speed (and it's clear from the start of this thread that we do), any system that we come up with needs to be as unlike {{cleanup}} as possible.
Personally, I suspect that the only way to handle these things is to do them yourself. I long ago gave up on the notion of article tags being an effective way to get anything but the most trivial (and thus edit-count-building) maintenance work done.
-- Robth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Robth) _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 10/16/06, Rory Stolzenberg rory096@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/16/06, Robth robth1@gmail.com wrote:
{{Cleanup}} is a ticket to a year-long line. If we want to get these issues addressed with any kind of speed (and it's clear from the start of this thread that we do), any system that we come up with needs to be as unlike {{cleanup}} as possible.
Personally, I suspect that the only way to handle these things is to do them yourself. I long ago gave up on the notion of article tags being an effective way to get anything but the most trivial (and thus edit-count-building) maintenance work done.
Not true, cleanup also has a huge amount of articles, and while there's a backlog, there's also a lot of people working on it. Currently, [[Category:Articles with unsourced statements]] has a massive, totally disorganized backlog, and was actually deleted a couple months ago because it was so hopeless. A cleanup-like system would be a huge improvement, and allow us to take care of the ones that most need sourcing first.
I'm well aware of the situation; I spent several months doing a lot of cleanup work before getting burned out on it. There are people working on cleanup, it is true. At the same time, the backlog is growing rapidly, and an (admittedly, highly unscientific) examination of what happens to de-tagged articles that I did in August suggested that much of what gets de-tagged doesn't actually get cleaned up much. My point above was that, in general, maintenance tags are not the answer; they lead people to assume that they can get something fixed just by sticking a tag on it, when in fact the only way to get something fixed in a timely fashion (and sometimes at all) is to do it yourself.
Robth wrote:
On 10/16/06, Rory Stolzenberg rory096@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/16/06, Robth robth1@gmail.com wrote:
{{Cleanup}} is a ticket to a year-long line. If we want to get these issues addressed with any kind of speed (and it's clear from the start of this thread that we do), any system that we come up with needs to be as unlike {{cleanup}} as possible.
Personally, I suspect that the only way to handle these things is to do them yourself. I long ago gave up on the notion of article tags being an effective way to get anything but the most trivial (and thus edit-count-building) maintenance work done.
Not true, cleanup also has a huge amount of articles, and while there's a backlog, there's also a lot of people working on it. Currently, [[Category:Articles with unsourced statements]] has a massive, totally disorganized backlog, and was actually deleted a couple months ago because it was so hopeless. A cleanup-like system would be a huge improvement, and allow us to take care of the ones that most need sourcing first.
I'm well aware of the situation; I spent several months doing a lot of cleanup work before getting burned out on it. There are people working on cleanup, it is true. At the same time, the backlog is growing rapidly, and an (admittedly, highly unscientific) examination of what happens to de-tagged articles that I did in August suggested that much of what gets de-tagged doesn't actually get cleaned up much. My point above was that, in general, maintenance tags are not the answer; they lead people to assume that they can get something fixed just by sticking a tag on it, when in fact the only way to get something fixed in a timely fashion (and sometimes at all) is to do it yourself.
How about a function that will let you tag something and after 7 days (or a month or whatever) a bot will leave a note on YOUR talk page that the tag has not been removed. This would allow people to tag things that they are not comfortable removing, but only really encourage people to use the tags if they have the intention of following up.
SKL
On 10/17/06, ScottL scott@mu.org wrote:
How about a function that will let you tag something and after 7 days (or a month or whatever) a bot will leave a note on YOUR talk page that the tag has not been removed. This would allow people to tag things that they are not comfortable removing, but only really encourage people to use the tags if they have the intention of following up.
Now that is a really good idea.
Jimbo wrote:
I would recommend that anything like this for which no citation appears within 7 days be removed or edited in some fashion to remove the need.
With equal emphasis on the "edited in some fashion to remove the need" part, bearing in mind that in many cases the appropriate edit is simply to remove the tag. Although many instances of the {fact} tag are properly applied to surprising or dubious facts which do need to be cited or removed, many others refer to obvious facts or facts which are in fact supported by an article's existing references. So (as ever) some care is needed here; anyone who got the idea that "any fact left uncited for 7 days may/must be removed" would be setting themselves or the encyclopedia up for a fall.
(My point here is not to argue against use of the {fact} tag or the removal of unsourced facts. But of course the reality is that we've currently got extra-zealous editors strewing this tag around *everywhere*, and not always appropriately.)
Steve Summit wrote:
With equal emphasis on the "edited in some fashion to remove the need" part, bearing in mind that in many cases the appropriate edit is simply to remove the tag. Although many instances of the {fact} tag are properly applied to surprising or dubious facts which do need to be cited or removed, many others refer to obvious facts or facts which are in fact supported by an article's existing references. So (as ever) some care is needed here; anyone who got the idea that "any fact left uncited for 7 days may/must be removed" would be setting themselves or the encyclopedia up for a fall.
Yes, of course. My feeling here is that the fact tag is in essence a request: "Could some other human look at this and confirm for me that this sounds sketchy and either needs to be referenced or removed?" And so there are (roughly) three possible responses: (1) reference it (2) remove it (3) note (on the talk page, I think) that the fact tag was removed because the claim is not, after all, sketchy.
--Jimbo
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Steve Summit wrote:
With equal emphasis on the "edited in some fashion to remove the need" part, bearing in mind that in many cases the appropriate edit is simply to remove the tag. Although many instances of the {fact} tag are properly applied to surprising or dubious facts which do need to be cited or removed, many others refer to obvious facts or facts which are in fact supported by an article's existing references. So (as ever) some care is needed here; anyone who got the idea that "any fact left uncited for 7 days may/must be removed" would be setting themselves or the encyclopedia up for a fall.
Yes, of course. My feeling here is that the fact tag is in essence a request: "Could some other human look at this and confirm for me that this sounds sketchy and either needs to be referenced or removed?" And so there are (roughly) three possible responses: (1) reference it (2) remove it (3) note (on the talk page, I think) that the fact tag was removed because the claim is not, after all, sketchy.
I don't see the need to become compulsive about removing the tag in all instances. Sometimes the right action is to just leave the tag in place as an equivalent to "buyer beware." If I am reading about a relatively obscure subject I could be inclined to add the tag to a statement which may be correct but would be strenghthened by being referenced. When I do that I am hopeful that someone someday will have the necessary tools to fact check the point, but since the topic is relatively obscure I have no illusion that the evidence will be found so quickly as in seven days. If the tag remains for a year no harm is done, and the reader is warned that the "fact" is not entirely confirmed.
Becoming compulsive about correctness strikes me as unwiki as political correctness.
Ec
On 10/15/06, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
. So (as ever) some care is needed here; anyone who got the idea that "any fact left uncited for 7 days may/must be removed" would be setting themselves or the encyclopedia up for a fall.
We don't have the manpower.
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geni stated for the record:
On 10/15/06, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
. So (as ever) some care is needed here; anyone who got the idea that "any fact left uncited for 7 days may/must be removed" would be setting themselves or the encyclopedia up for a fall.
We don't have the manpower.
Citation required.
- -- Sean Barrett | Therapy is expensive. Popping sean@epoptic.com | bubble wrap is cheap. You choose.
On 10/15/06, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.com wrote:
Citation required.
[[Category:Wikipedia_backlog]]
Removeing citation required stuff would be a pain since: you would have to find the sentance in the edit window which isn't always easy. You would have no way to know which citation required on the page was the one you were looking for.
geni wrote:
On 10/15/06, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
So (as ever) some care is needed here; anyone who got the idea that "any fact left uncited for 7 days may/must be removed" would be setting themselves or the encyclopedia up for a fall.
We don't have the manpower.
But that's not even the point. If the notion got entrenched that *any* fact-tagged statement left unattended for more than a week could be summarily deleted, I do dare to speculate that it would lead to abuses, completely apart from the question of whether every fact-tagged statement would receive proper attention.
Besides which, I don't think it's too meaningful to say that we "don't have the manpower". We have *vast* quantities of manpower, more than we sometimes know what to do with. We've currently got, on average, something like 130 edits being made each minute, day in, day out. That's almost 200,000 edits per day, and over 2 per second. Now, it's true, many of those are to talk pages, and the rest are spread out over more than a million articles, and some fraction of those are drive-by vandalism, but still.
Wikipedia wouldn't exist in its current form if it didn't have near-infinite manpower available to it. Many aspects of Wikipedia are clearly impossible due to "lack of manpower", yet seem to work just fine anyway. In fact, Wikipedia is one of my two examples (along with, um, Microsoft) of the successful application of the Mongolian Hordes technique. (Oddly enough we still don't have an article on this technique, but the Jargon File does.)
On 10/16/06, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
Besides which, I don't think it's too meaningful to say that we "don't have the manpower". We have *vast* quantities of manpower, more than we sometimes know what to do with. We've currently got, on average, something like 130 edits being made each minute, day in, day out. That's almost 200,000 edits per day, and over 2 per second. Now, it's true, many of those are to talk pages, and the rest are spread out over more than a million articles, and some fraction of those are drive-by vandalism, but still.
It should be remembered that there are different categories of manpower. Manpower that will do whatever it darn well likes makes up a lot of editing. Manpower that can be controlled to a significant degree is limited as is to be expected on a volunteer project.
Wikipedia wouldn't exist in its current form if it didn't have near-infinite manpower available to it. Many aspects of Wikipedia are clearly impossible due to "lack of manpower", yet seem to work just fine anyway. In fact, Wikipedia is one of my two examples (along with, um, Microsoft) of the successful application of the Mongolian Hordes technique. (Oddly enough we still don't have an article on this technique, but the Jargon File does.)
Probably because having the massive error in naming repeatedly being pointed out by our military nerds would be depressing.
On 10/15/06, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
geni wrote:
On 10/15/06, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
So (as ever) some care is needed here; anyone who got the idea that "any fact left uncited for 7 days may/must be removed" would be setting themselves or the encyclopedia up for a fall.
We don't have the manpower.
But that's not even the point. If the notion got entrenched that *any* fact-tagged statement left unattended for more than a week could be summarily deleted, I do dare to speculate that it would lead to abuses, completely apart from the question of whether every fact-tagged statement would receive proper attention.
I don't really see why it would lead to any more abuse than the notion that *any* {{no-source}} tagged image left unattended for more than a week could be summarily deleted.
Well, I guess deleting images requires an admin to agree, so maybe that's a reason. But on the other hand, a "deleted" fact can easily be re-added by anyone.
Frankly, I think what's *more* likely to lead to abuses is the notion that a fact which is completely unsourced can be left *in* the encyclopedia for more than a week. And it *has* led to abuses, lots of them.
Anthony
geni wrote:
On 10/15/06, Steve Summit scs@eskimo.com wrote:
So (as ever) some care is needed here; anyone who got the idea that "any fact left uncited for 7 days may/must be removed" would be setting themselves or the encyclopedia up for a fall.
We don't have the manpower.
That's a simple enough fact! We really need painstaking fact-checking, and that can only be achieved over a very long time. Mutant bots that simply remove fact-tags in accordance with simple time-based parameters aren't helping anybody.
Ec
Addressing the example - this IS a (possibly the most) widely propagated example of political correctness gone mad in the UK. Just google for "blackboard political correctness". However I can't for the life of me find the original story that led to this (if there was one in the first place)
the wub
On 10/15/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
First, and example, and then a question/suggestion. If you get bored with my example, please continue anyway to my question/suggestion. :)
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/10/15/how_many_times_mu...
Some are easy, of course, like the Wikipedia entry claiming that the word blackboard ''is now perceived by some as being 'politically incorrect' in the United Kingdom.'' ''Citation needed,'' a parenthesis cautioned. Indeed: a Nexis search of UK publications found some 30 blackboards in a week, against just three chalkboards.
This is a quote from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_change
Our full text reads:
Political correctness is a real or perceived attempt to refine or restrict language and terms used in public discussion to those deemed acceptable or appropriate. For example "blackboard" is now perceived
by >some as being "politically incorrect" in the United Kingdom, [citation >needed] and so teachers are instructed to call it a "chalkboard" >instead.
The tag was added here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Semantic_change&diff=43364581&...
So from March 12 until now, we have a request that this dubious tidbit be sourced, with no movement.
I think that clearly this bit should have been sourced or removed a long time ago.
Is there any way we could have a date-stamped fact tag? Which would put such things into a category or other similar page? The purpose would be to provide a mechanism for people to find *older* examples of fact tags, in order to go ahead and remove them.
I would recommend that anything like this for which no citation appears within 7 days be removed or edited in some fashion to remove the need.
--Jimbo _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
the wub wrote:
Addressing the example - this IS a (possibly the most) widely propagated example of political correctness gone mad in the UK. Just google for "blackboard political correctness". However I can't for the life of me find the original story that led to this (if there was one in the first place)
Precisely. It has all the flavor of an urban legend. I found many many messageboard posts which claimed it as fact, but no one seems to have a source. Perhaps it is true, after all, but the initial evidence seems to suggest otherwise.
--Jimbo
On 10/15/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
the wub wrote:
Addressing the example - this IS a (possibly the most) widely propagated example of political correctness gone mad in the UK. Just google for "blackboard political correctness". However I can't for the life of me
find
the original story that led to this (if there was one in the first
place)
Precisely. It has all the flavor of an urban legend. I found many many messageboard posts which claimed it as fact, but no one seems to have a source. Perhaps it is true, after all, but the initial evidence seems to suggest otherwise.
An urban legend so prominent in fact that it is mentioned in a government report (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/03/mepess/10 - section 6.64) :-) I honestly wouldn't be that surprised if it was true, but I agree that if no one can find evidence, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia.
the wub
the wub wrote:
On 10/15/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote: An urban legend so prominent in fact that it is mentioned in a government report (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/03/mepess/10 - section 6.64) :-) I honestly wouldn't be that surprised if it was true, but I agree that if no one can find evidence, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia.
An urban legend so prominent that it's mentioned in a government report _does_ belong in Wikipedia for that very reason. By all means add "this is an urban legend" to it, but don't simply remove it. Otherwise when people encounter it elsewhere and do a search to find out more about it they may not discover its urban-legendness.
the wub wrote:
On 10/15/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
the wub wrote:
Addressing the example - this IS a (possibly the most) widely propagated example of political correctness gone mad in the UK. Just google for "blackboard political correctness". However I can't for the life of me find
the original story that led to this (if there was one in the first place)
Precisely. It has all the flavor of an urban legend. I found many many messageboard posts which claimed it as fact, but no one seems to have a source. Perhaps it is true, after all, but the initial evidence seems to suggest otherwise.
An urban legend so prominent in fact that it is mentioned in a government report (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/03/mepess/10 - section 6.64) :-) I honestly wouldn't be that surprised if it was true, but I agree that if no one can find evidence, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia.
Not so quick. If a claim has developed the status of a widely believed urban legend we need to say something about it, if only to establish that it is indeed an urban legend. Readers who have heard about this from a friend of a friend can then come to us to be assured that the idea has no basis in fact.
Ec
Jimmy Wales wrote:
the wub wrote:
Addressing the example - this IS a (possibly the most) widely propagated example of political correctness gone mad in the UK. Just google for "blackboard political correctness". However I can't for the life of me find the original story that led to this (if there was one in the first place)
Precisely. It has all the flavor of an urban legend. I found many many messageboard posts which claimed it as fact, but no one seems to have a source. Perhaps it is true, after all, but the initial evidence seems to suggest otherwise.
This opens up the question of whether we need "a source" or "an original source". If we don't accept original research, we shouldn't be demanding it. Tracking these possible urban legends to their ultimate beginnings should not be required. Naturally, some source would be necessary, the more reliable the better, and messageboards are questionable at best. If another reputable source questions the claim that too should be mentioned in the interests of NPOV.
"Flavor" is not evidence; it is nothing more than strong instinctual suspicion.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Precisely. It has all the flavor of an urban legend. I found many many messageboard posts which claimed it as fact, but no one seems to have a source. Perhaps it is true, after all, but the initial evidence seems to suggest otherwise.
This opens up the question of whether we need "a source" or "an original source". If we don't accept original research, we shouldn't be demanding it. Tracking these possible urban legends to their ultimate beginnings should not be required. Naturally, some source would be necessary, the more reliable the better, and messageboards are questionable at best. If another reputable source questions the claim that too should be mentioned in the interests of NPOV.
"Flavor" is not evidence; it is nothing more than strong instinctual suspicion.
Hmm. We might be talking past each other.
For claim X, when it seems that X may be an urban legend, we ought not to assert X unless and until we find a proper source for it. And "proper" is an editorial judgment which will depend on the context, and about which reasonable people ought to be able to find some compromise or consensus.
For claim X, when it seems that X may be an urban legend, we ought not to assert that X is an urban legend, unless and until we find a proper source for it.
Generally speaking, anytime a claim seems reasonably suspect, we ought to try to remove it while we sort things out.
Yes, some trolls will use such a policy to try to remove things like "Thomas Jefferson was the 3rd President" until we get a source. But we should set our standards assuming rational people as our colleagues, and deal with the trolls as a separate behavioral issue.
--Jimbo
On 10/16/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Yes, some trolls will use such a policy to try to remove things like "Thomas Jefferson was the 3rd President" until we get a source. But we should set our standards assuming rational people as our colleagues, and deal with the trolls as a separate behavioral issue.
Those kinds of trolls are fairly easily dealt with:
"Thomas Jefferson: Third President 1801-1809" http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/tj3.html
From the Biography of Thomas Jefferson, found on the official White
House website. That took about 1 second - if I had a whole minute I could have found lots better stuff.
People keep claiming that it's hard to source "obvious facts"; however, in practice that's almost never the case. Obvious facts are generally extremely easy to source.
Jay.
On Oct 16, 2006, at 6:12 PM, jayjg wrote:
People keep claiming that it's hard to source "obvious facts"; however, in practice that's almost never the case. Obvious facts are generally extremely easy to source.
A better and more important issue is that it's a waste of time to source obvious facts.
-Phil
On 10/16/06, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Oct 16, 2006, at 6:12 PM, jayjg wrote:
People keep claiming that it's hard to source "obvious facts"; however, in practice that's almost never the case. Obvious facts are generally extremely easy to source.
A better and more important issue is that it's a waste of time to source obvious facts.
Not really. Once they're sourced, they're sourced forever, and inserting spurious fact templates gets more difficult. And every once in a while, you discover that what you thought was an "obvious fact" was slightly different from what you imagined, or more complex than at first glance, or even completely untrue.
Jay.
jayjg wrote:
On 10/16/06, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Oct 16, 2006, at 6:12 PM, jayjg wrote:
People keep claiming that it's hard to source "obvious facts"; however, in practice that's almost never the case. Obvious facts are generally extremely easy to source.
A better and more important issue is that it's a waste of time to source obvious facts.
Not really. Once they're sourced, they're sourced forever, and inserting spurious fact templates gets more difficult. And every once in a while, you discover that what you thought was an "obvious fact" was slightly different from what you imagined, or more complex than at first glance, or even completely untrue.
Jay.
However, having between 1 and 3 notes per sentence in an article is probably not good for readability and decreases the usefulness of the notes on the whole.
SKL
jayjg wrote:
On 10/16/06, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Oct 16, 2006, at 6:12 PM, jayjg wrote:
People keep claiming that it's hard to source "obvious facts"; however, in practice that's almost never the case. Obvious facts are generally extremely easy to source.
A better and more important issue is that it's a waste of time to source obvious facts.
Not really. Once they're sourced, they're sourced forever ...
I'm glad to see you say that.
Jefferson had an 8-year presidency during which a lot of things happened. An article about any one of those things can quite easily have a reference to "third president Thomas Jefferson" It follows from what you say that a source will not be needed in any of those articles, but a link to [[Thoma Jefferson]] will be sufficient.
Ec
On 10/17/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
jayjg wrote:
On 10/16/06, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Oct 16, 2006, at 6:12 PM, jayjg wrote:
People keep claiming that it's hard to source "obvious facts"; however, in practice that's almost never the case. Obvious facts are generally extremely easy to source.
A better and more important issue is that it's a waste of time to source obvious facts.
Not really. Once they're sourced, they're sourced forever ...
I'm glad to see you say that.
Jefferson had an 8-year presidency during which a lot of things happened. An article about any one of those things can quite easily have a reference to "third president Thomas Jefferson" It follows from what you say that a source will not be needed in any of those articles, but a link to [[Thoma Jefferson]] will be sufficient.
No, that doesn't follow from what I say. Wikipedia doesn't use itself as a reference, as you have no idea what might be in that [[Thomas Jefferson]] article when any individual happens to click on it.
Jay.
jayjg wrote:
On 10/17/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
jayjg wrote:
On 10/16/06, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
A better and more important issue is that it's a waste of time to source obvious facts.
Not really. Once they're sourced, they're sourced forever ...
I'm glad to see you say that.
Jefferson had an 8-year presidency during which a lot of things happened. An article about any one of those things can quite easily have a reference to "third president Thomas Jefferson" It follows from what you say that a source will not be needed in any of those articles, but a link to [[Thoma Jefferson]] will be sufficient.
No, that doesn't follow from what I say. Wikipedia doesn't use itself as a reference, as you have no idea what might be in that [[Thomas Jefferson]] article when any individual happens to click on it.
Your POV makes no sense at all. You might as well say that there's no point to making links because you don't trust the work of others. There's absolutely nothing wrong with a reference to another article.
Ec
Phil Sandifer wrote:
On Oct 16, 2006, at 6:12 PM, jayjg wrote:
People keep claiming that it's hard to source "obvious facts"; however, in practice that's almost never the case. Obvious facts are generally extremely easy to source.
A better and more important issue is that it's a waste of time to source obvious facts.
I think that, being reasonable people, we all more or less agree about this. That is to say, obvious facts do not need to be sourced, and if someone wants to challenge them (to disrupt things) one easy enough way to deal with the is to provide the cites.
All I really meant to guard against was the notion that a firm policy of "source it or remove it" for controversial points does not have to lead us down some bad path where people start removing obvious facts just to tweak us.
If someone went to 100 articles and removed a dozen sentences from each with no explanation other than "unsourced" and they were removing patently obvious facts, that is a behavioral issue that can be dealt with separately.
--Jimbo
On 10/16/06, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Oct 16, 2006, at 6:12 PM, jayjg wrote:
People keep claiming that it's hard to source "obvious facts"; however, in practice that's almost never the case. Obvious facts are generally extremely easy to source.
A better and more important issue is that it's a waste of time to source obvious facts.
It's also a waste of time to state obvious facts in an encyclopedia article.
For less than "obvious" facts I do think that a source should be *somewhere* in the references.
I also don't think people should be removing facts that they know to be true, just because they are unsourced.
Further, and not everyone agrees with me on this, someone should do a quick check for a source before removing (or {{fact}} tagging) something which isn't at least probably false (or unprovable and therefore POV).
Anthony
It's also a waste of time to state obvious facts in an encyclopedia article.
Why is it a waste of time? It's not like Wikipedia needs to be competed rght now. We can spend all the time in the world editing, regardless of efficiency level.
--Chris "I hate —es!" --Me
On 10/17/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 10/16/06, Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
On Oct 16, 2006, at 6:12 PM, jayjg wrote:
People keep claiming that it's hard to source "obvious facts"; however, in practice that's almost never the case. Obvious facts are generally extremely easy to source.
A better and more important issue is that it's a waste of time to source obvious facts.
It's also a waste of time to state obvious facts in an encyclopedia article.
For less than "obvious" facts I do think that a source should be *somewhere* in the references.
I also don't think people should be removing facts that they know to be true, just because they are unsourced.
Further, and not everyone agrees with me on this, someone should do a quick check for a source before removing (or {{fact}} tagging) something which isn't at least probably false (or unprovable and therefore POV).
Anthony _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 10/17/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
It's also a waste of time to state obvious facts in an encyclopedia article.
Obvious depends on prior knowledge; this is why obvious facts end up in an encyclopedia, because for someone out there, they're not obvious.
(minor nitpick, agree with the rest of what you wrote)
-Matt
On 10/19/06, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/17/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
It's also a waste of time to state obvious facts in an encyclopedia
article.
Obvious depends on prior knowledge; this is why obvious facts end up in an encyclopedia, because for someone out there, they're not obvious.
(minor nitpick, agree with the rest of what you wrote)
Looking back at the example, I guess the sort of thing like "Thomas Jefferson was the third president" does belong in an encyclopedia, and I can see how such a fact could be considered "obvious".
At the same time, I'd put this in the category of those facts which absolutely should be contained somewhere in the reference material, but need not be referenced by an individual footnote.
What's more controversial is "obvious" facts about public perceptions, such as the example Jimmy was talking about.
"Critics of the GPL often describe it as being "viral"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft#Is_copyleft_.22viral.22.3F, based on the GPL terms that all derived works must in turn be licensed under the GPL." (from [[GNU General Public License]])
What should we do with that? {{fact}} tag it? Remove it? Leave it as is? Personally I'd say it should be removed. I just removed, without logging in, the whole paragraph, which was nothing more than speculation regarding this "perception". Let's see what happens.
Anthony
On 10/19/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
"Critics of the GPL often describe it as being "viral"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft#Is_copyleft_.22viral.22.3F, based on the GPL terms that all derived works must in turn be licensed under the GPL." (from [[GNU General Public License]])
What should we do with that? {{fact}} tag it? Remove it? Leave it as is? Personally I'd say it should be removed. I just removed, without logging in, the whole paragraph, which was nothing more than speculation regarding this "perception". Let's see what happens.
21:59, 19 October 2006http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=GNU_General_Public_License&oldid=82506819 75.202.44.46http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=75.202.44.46( Talkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:75.202.44.46&action=edit ) ({{fact}}) 22:18, 19 October 2006http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=GNU_General_Public_License&oldid=82510061 Haeleth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Haeleth (Talkhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Haeleth| contribshttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Haeleth ) (rv deletion with misleading edit summary)
I'm not at all surprised. This is why I usually use the {{fact}} tag.
Anthony
On 10/19/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 10/19/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
"Critics of the GPL often describe it as being "viral", based on the GPL terms that all derived works must in turn be licensed under the GPL." (from [[GNU General Public License]])
What should we do with that? {{fact}} tag it? Remove it? Leave it as is? Personally I'd say it should be removed. I just removed, without logging in, the whole paragraph, which was nothing more than speculation regarding this "perception". Let's see what happens.
21:59, 19 October 2006 75.202.44.46 (Talk) ({{fact}}) 22:18, 19 October 2006 Haeleth ( Talk | contribs) (rv deletion with misleading edit summary)
I'm not at all surprised. This is why I usually use the {{fact}} tag.
And now it's turned into an all out multi-party edit war.
01:05, 20 October 2006 75.202.80.124 (Talk) (→Criticism) 01:06, 20 October 2006 75.202.80.124 (Talk) (→Criticism) 03:25, 20 October 2006 Gwern (Talk | contribs) («197 words changed» rv inane {{fact}}s) 10:02, 20 October 2006 Alphax (Talk | contribs) (If there /are/ citations for this stuff, please <ref> them...) 10:45, 20 October 2006 Haeleth (Talk | contribs) (The sky is blue.{{fact}} Grass is green.{{fact}})
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=GNU_General_Public_License&act...
So what's the solution? Are we destined to keep speculative paragraphs like the one in question in the encyclopedia?
I'm going to try removing the paragraph completely again, and leaving a note on the talk page.
Anthony
Anthony wrote:
On 10/19/06, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/17/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
It's also a waste of time to state obvious facts in an encyclopedia
article.
Obvious depends on prior knowledge; this is why obvious facts end up in an encyclopedia, because for someone out there, they're not obvious.
(minor nitpick, agree with the rest of what you wrote)
Looking back at the example, I guess the sort of thing like "Thomas Jefferson was the third president" does belong in an encyclopedia, and I can see how such a fact could be considered "obvious".
At the same time, I'd put this in the category of those facts which absolutely should be contained somewhere in the reference material, but need not be referenced by an individual footnote.
What's more controversial is "obvious" facts about public perceptions, such as the example Jimmy was talking about.
"Critics of the GPL often describe it as being "viral"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft#Is_copyleft_.22viral.22.3F, based on the GPL terms that all derived works must in turn be licensed under the GPL." (from [[GNU General Public License]])
What should we do with that? {{fact}} tag it? Remove it? Leave it as is? Personally I'd say it should be removed. I just removed, without logging in, the whole paragraph, which was nothing more than speculation regarding this "perception". Let's see what happens.
Anthony _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Don't fancy putting it back in, do you?
Some of the most successful OSS technology is licensed under the GNU General Public License or GPL. The GPL mandates that any software that incorporates source code already licensed under the GPL will itself become subject to the GPL. When the resulting software product is distributed, its creator must make the entire source code base freely available to everyone, at no additional charge. This viral aspect of the GPL poses a threat to the intellectual property of any organization making use of it. It also fundamentally undermines the independent commercial software sector because it effectively makes it impossible to distribute software on a basis where recipients pay for the product rather than just the cost of distribution.
Speech Transcript - Craig Mundie, The New York University Stern School of Business
Prepared Text of Remarks by Craig Mundie, Microsoft Senior Vice President The Commercial Software Model The New York University Stern School of Business May 3, 2001
On 10/20/06, Steve Block steve.block@myrealbox.com wrote:
Don't fancy putting it back in, do you?
Some of the most successful OSS technology is licensed under the GNU General Public License or GPL. The GPL mandates that any software that incorporates source code already licensed under the GPL will itself become subject to the GPL. When the resulting software product is distributed, its creator must make the entire source code base freely available to everyone, at no additional charge. This viral aspect of the GPL poses a threat to the intellectual property of any organization making use of it. It also fundamentally undermines the independent commercial software sector because it effectively makes it impossible to distribute software on a basis where recipients pay for the product rather than just the cost of distribution.
Speech Transcript - Craig Mundie, The New York University Stern School of Business
Prepared Text of Remarks by Craig Mundie, Microsoft Senior Vice President The Commercial Software Model The New York University Stern School of Business May 3, 2001
No, I don't. Craig Mundie, and/or Microsoft, is hardly "critics often". Perhaps there is a time and a place for the use of the phrase "critics often" in a sentence in Wikipedia, but I don't see any evidence that this is one of them.
Anthony
Steve Block wrote:
Anthony wrote:
What should we do with that? {{fact}} tag it? Remove it? Leave it as is? Personally I'd say it should be removed. I just removed, without logging in, the whole paragraph, which was nothing more than speculation regarding this "perception". Let's see what happens.
Don't fancy putting it back in, do you?
Never mind, I've done it, now let's see what happens. I have to wonder about WP:POINT here, the edit war that started could so easily have been avoided by searching google for the term GNU viral. Still, the encyclopedia got improved and no-one got hurt. I'm hoping we're all learning the lesson here that we might not be as bad as we actually think we are for reliability, but that the lack of sourcing and how we source and represent those sources in the articles is becoming an issue.
Steve block
On 10/20/06, Steve Block steve.block@myrealbox.com wrote:
Steve Block wrote:
Anthony wrote:
What should we do with that? {{fact}} tag it? Remove it? Leave it as is? Personally I'd say it should be removed. I just removed, without logging in, the whole paragraph, which was nothing more than speculation regarding this "perception". Let's see what happens.
Don't fancy putting it back in, do you?
Never mind, I've done it, now let's see what happens.
It's starting to look good to me. Hopefully these new changes will stick around.
I have to wonder about WP:POINT here, the edit war that started could so easily have been avoided by searching google for the term GNU viral.
Frankly, if it were up to me I wouldn't devote so much space to this comment by Craig Mundie. I think the encyclopedia is better now than it was before, but if it were up to me I'd remove the entire "criticisms" section.
So yeah, it's possible if I had searched google for the term GNU viral I would have come up with exactly the quote you're talking about, would have made the change, and we would have saved a few edits. It's also possible I would have noticed all the uses of the term "viral" to describe the GPL being made by people who weren't critics, and would have changed the paragraph in a completely different way.
Still, the encyclopedia got improved and no-one got hurt. I'm hoping we're all learning the lesson here that we might not be as bad as we actually think we are for reliability, but that the lack of sourcing and how we source and represent those sources in the articles is becoming an issue.
Reliability isn't really the problem with these sorts of statements. POV is more the problem when you throw out these fringe statements, attribute them to "critics", and then proceed to prove them wrong. It's the problem with the GPL article (which is far from fixed in my opinion, in two days we've fixed one paragraph of it). And it's also the problem with the original quote by Jimbo (the idea that proponents of political correctness perceive the term "blackboard" as improper is so ludicrous that it amounts to nothing more than picking on the political correctness movement).
Anthony
On 10/19/06, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/17/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
It's also a waste of time to state obvious facts in an encyclopedia
article.
Obvious depends on prior knowledge; this is why obvious facts end up in an encyclopedia, because for someone out there, they're not obvious.
Indeed. Jefferson was the third president, sure, but I would have a tough time naming, say, the first three Australian prime ministers. Qualitatively there's no difference between these questions. By extension, I wouldn't know the difference if someone vandalized these articles in a non-obvious way; this is why good sources for obvious facts are useful. We write for English speakers and learners around the world, at all possible levels of knowledge.
I figure for everything I write about, there's someone out there who might want to know more, and if I can't provide outside sources I've no business writing about it. I know this argument has gone round and round in circles for years regarding undocumented facts of life in various cultures, but I am talking about the other 95% of information in the encyclopedia. Let's not forget that an encyclopedia is by definition a tertiary source, something that makes connections to an outside world of knowledge. I wish there was a culture of making notes about sources, no matter how bad those sources are, on the talk pages of articles as information was added -- better to know that someone was adding information they gained through personal knowledge, or because it is "common sense," or because they copied from another article, than to not have any information at all about where a particular statement comes from.
-- phoebe / brassratgirl
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Precisely. It has all the flavor of an urban legend. I found many many messageboard posts which claimed it as fact, but no one seems to have a source. Perhaps it is true, after all, but the initial evidence seems to suggest otherwise.
This opens up the question of whether we need "a source" or "an original source". If we don't accept original research, we shouldn't be demanding it. Tracking these possible urban legends to their ultimate beginnings should not be required. Naturally, some source would be necessary, the more reliable the better, and messageboards are questionable at best. If another reputable source questions the claim that too should be mentioned in the interests of NPOV.
"Flavor" is not evidence; it is nothing more than strong instinctual suspicion.
Hmm. We might be talking past each other.
This may very well be. Perhaps it's because in my philosophy of the pursuit of knowledge the questions are more important than the answers.
For claim X, when it seems that X may be an urban legend, we ought not to assert X unless and until we find a proper source for it. And "proper" is an editorial judgment which will depend on the context, and about which reasonable people ought to be able to find some compromise or consensus.
We don't disagree here I absolutely agree that "proper" (or "reliable" or "reputable") depends on the context. The same statement can also operate on different level. Let's start with X = "The word 'blackboard' is not politically correct." By itself this is not a fact, but an opinion. From this we can have: 1. Many people claim X 2. Some schools have banned the word "blackboard" because X 3. X is an urban legend. 4. Statement 2. is an urban legend.
The standards of evidence for these statements will differ.
For claim X, when it seems that X may be an urban legend, we ought not to assert that X is an urban legend, unless and until we find a proper source for it.
I agree with this too. I believe that the two elements necessary to an urban legend are wide belief, and an assertion that is completely false, and often in contradiction to contradiction to commen sense.
Generally speaking, anytime a claim seems reasonably suspect, we ought to try to remove it while we sort things out.
Apart from the possibility that "reasonably suspect" may be an oxymoron :-) ...
This may be where we differ. I thought the Boston Globe comment was favorable. We become publicly more credible when we recognize and admit our own imperfections, and when we can reach out to the general public to ask them what they know about a claim. To be sure, potentially libellous claims still need to be held to a much highter standard, but for the general run of uncertain claims, keeping the tag indefinitely will show that we want help rather than having the question remain hidden and unanswered. This is even more important with obscure subjects where nobody with the needed expertise is available to regularly check facts.
Yes, some trolls will use such a policy to try to remove things like "Thomas Jefferson was the 3rd President" until we get a source. But we should set our standards assuming rational people as our colleagues, and deal with the trolls as a separate behavioral issue.
And other trolls will want that statement deleted because not including the words "of the United States" could make him the president of almost anything. ;-)
Ec
In message 63a0b5580610150810w4e0949d5j73a929a3112a3c0c@mail.gmail.com, the wub thewub.wiki-gM/Ye1E23mwN+BqQ9rBEUg@public.gmane.org writes
Addressing the example - this IS a (possibly the most) widely propagated example of political correctness gone mad in the UK. Just google for "blackboard political correctness". However I can't for the life of me find the original story that led to this (if there was one in the first place)
the wub
I find it very frustrating trying to cite commonly known events.
On [[FA Premier League]] someone {{fact}}ed the sentence "UEFA, European football's governing body, lifted the ban on English clubs playing in European competitions in 1990 and the Taylor Report on stadium safety standards, which proposed expensive upgrades to all-seater stadiums, was published in January of that year." What are they asking to be cited? UEFA lifting the ban can be checked by looking at any article on English clubs' participation in continental competitions. The Taylor Report is well known and referred to in any number of places on the web, but despite looking for hours on UK Government sites I've completely failed to find the original document. I eventually settled for citing the 1994 order requiring certain stadia to be all-seater.
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Some are easy, of course, like the Wikipedia entry claiming that the word blackboard ‘‘is now perceived by some as being ’politically incorrect’ in the United Kingdom.’’ ‘‘Citation needed,’’ a parenthesis cautioned. Indeed: a Nexis search of UK publications found some 30 blackboards in a week, against just three chalkboards.
This is a quote from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_change
Our full text reads:
Political correctness is a real or perceived attempt to refine or restrict language and terms used in public discussion to those deemed acceptable or appropriate. For example "blackboard" is now perceived
by >some as being "politically incorrect" in the United Kingdom, [citation >needed] and so teachers are instructed to call it a "chalkboard" >instead.
From last six months:
Pet lip Evening Chronicle (Newcastle-upon-Tyne); Aug 16, 2006; Sophy Doughty; p. 3
Standing up to the PC brigade Western Daily Press 24 August 2006
My news archive is limited to post 1992 but I can get back to:
Political Correctness goes beyond a joke The Sunday Times (London); May 16, 1993; Peter McKay;
I can cite the portion where the cite is needed, but I can't cite the follow on text, that chalk board is now preferred. Considering most schools moved to white boards by now, it's a bit redundant, but...
Steve Block wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Some are easy, of course, like the Wikipedia entry claiming that the word blackboard ‘‘is now perceived by some as being ’politically incorrect’ in the United Kingdom.’’ ‘‘Citation needed,’’ a parenthesis cautioned. Indeed: a Nexis search of UK publications found some 30 blackboards in a week, against just three chalkboards.
This is a quote from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_change
Our full text reads:
Political correctness is a real or perceived attempt to refine or restrict language and terms used in public discussion to those deemed acceptable or appropriate. For example "blackboard" is now perceived
by >some as being "politically incorrect" in the United Kingdom, [citation >needed] and so teachers are instructed to call it a "chalkboard" >instead.
From last six months:
Pet lip Evening Chronicle (Newcastle-upon-Tyne); Aug 16, 2006; Sophy Doughty; p. 3
Standing up to the PC brigade Western Daily Press 24 August 2006
My news archive is limited to post 1992 but I can get back to:
Political Correctness goes beyond a joke The Sunday Times (London); May 16, 1993; Peter McKay;
I can cite the portion where the cite is needed, but I can't cite the follow on text, that chalk board is now preferred. Considering most schools moved to white boards by now, it's a bit redundant, but...
Spoke too soon: PC or not PC ... that was 1993's burning question;Review of the Year 1993 The Sunday Times (London); Dec 26, 1993; Maurice Chittenden;
Contains the line:"Blackboards have been replaced with chalkboards in some schools." I would think that supports the claim, although perhaps it may be wise to contextualise it to the early 1990s.
Steve Block wrote:
Steve Block wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Some are easy, of course, like the Wikipedia entry claiming that the word blackboard ‘‘is now perceived by some as being ’politically incorrect’ in the United Kingdom.’’ ‘‘Citation needed,’’ a parenthesis cautioned. Indeed: a Nexis search of UK publications found some 30 blackboards in a week, against just three chalkboards.
This is a quote from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_change
Our full text reads:
Political correctness is a real or perceived attempt to refine or restrict language and terms used in public discussion to those deemed acceptable or appropriate. For example "blackboard" is now perceived
by >some as being "politically incorrect" in the United Kingdom, [citation >needed] and so teachers are instructed to call it a "chalkboard" >instead.
From last six months:
Pet lip Evening Chronicle (Newcastle-upon-Tyne); Aug 16, 2006; Sophy Doughty; p. 3
Standing up to the PC brigade Western Daily Press 24 August 2006
My news archive is limited to post 1992 but I can get back to:
Political Correctness goes beyond a joke The Sunday Times (London); May 16, 1993; Peter McKay;
I can cite the portion where the cite is needed, but I can't cite the follow on text, that chalk board is now preferred. Considering most schools moved to white boards by now, it's a bit redundant, but...
Spoke too soon: PC or not PC ... that was 1993's burning question;Review of the Year 1993 The Sunday Times (London); Dec 26, 1993; Maurice Chittenden;
Contains the line:"Blackboards have been replaced with chalkboards in some schools." I would think that supports the claim, although perhaps it may be wise to contextualise it to the early 1990s.
Mind you, something that gets my goat here: this article has two works referenced already.
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (1987) David Crystal. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (1995) David Crystal.
Now did the person who added the tag check the two references to make sure those claims weren't sourced there before they added the tag? Did you Jimmy? I'm never quite clear on how the reference system is supposed to work, but that's how I thought it did. You check the reference work cited to ensure it supports what the article asserts, no? The example has been in the article since creation, so I'd bet the editor who created it sourced the statement from one of those two works. The creator, in my mind, has satisfied the requirements to write the article. Are we going down the line where every sentence is followed by a footnote?
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Steve Block wrote:
Are we going down the line where every sentence is followed by a footnote?
Not every sentence, but at a bare minimum every sentence which is or can be reasonably called into question.
Fair enough. I guess arguments over what constitutes reasonable are what the talk page was invented for.
Jimmy Wales wrote:
First, and example, and then a question/suggestion. If you get bored with my example, please continue anyway to my question/suggestion. :)
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/10/15/how_many_times_mu...
Some are easy, of course, like the Wikipedia entry claiming that the word blackboard ‘‘is now perceived by some as being ’politically incorrect’ in the United Kingdom.’’ ‘‘Citation needed,’’ a parenthesis cautioned. Indeed: a Nexis search of UK publications found some 30 blackboards in a week, against just three chalkboards.
In the context of that Boston Globe article our cynicism ends up looking pretty good. Compare this to the others who simply quoted the politically correct material without question. The one who couldn't distinguish explication from political correctness in Dylan's lyrics does not even have the musical sense to recognize that replacing a monosyllable with a pentasyllable won't work.
I believe that the word "blackboard" is indeed retreating into obsolescence, but not for the reasons stated. Slate is an expensive commodity that is best reserved for useful things like pool tables, that has first been replaced by manufactured greenboards where chalk could still be used, and more recently by whiteboards where we can use a kind of erasable magic marker. If you think that whiteboard is not politically correct you can no longer complain by long scratchest with your fingernails.
This is a quote from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_change
Our full text reads:
Political correctness is a real or perceived attempt to refine or restrict language and terms used in public discussion to those deemed acceptable or appropriate. For example "blackboard" is now perceived
by >some as being "politically incorrect" in the United Kingdom, [citation >needed] and so teachers are instructed to call it a "chalkboard" >instead.
The tag was added here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Semantic_change&diff=43364581&...
So from March 12 until now, we have a request that this dubious tidbit be sourced, with no movement.
That diff also shows that that editor also made a number of unrelated changes to the article at the same time. Also missing at the time of his edit were the key words "by some" that appear in your quote. I would think that the standard of evidence should be much stricter if the words "by some" are omitted.
Ecan