There is a discussion at ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability#Age_of_unreferenced
... in which proposals are being made to remove unsourced content from articles and/or delete articles all together if material is not sourced within 30 days after placing a warning template.
I am no inclusionist, but I see this as a dangerous narrow application of policy that may cost us a lot of lost content that *is* verifiable.
My view is that editors should endeavor in *looking for sources* rather than deleting content that is not sourced. After all, we are here to build an encyclopedia, and the tens of thousands of occasional contributors that do not know of our policies, are after all, those that *add* most of the new material to our project.
-- Jossi
[[User:Jossi]] @ en.wiki
On Jul 11, 2007, at 7:28 PM, jf_wikipedia wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability#Age_of_unreferenced
TinyURL: http://preview.tinyurl.com/2opokr
On 7/12/07, jf_wikipedia jf_wikipedia@mac.com wrote:
There is a discussion at ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability#Age_of_unreferenced
... in which proposals are being made to remove unsourced content from articles and/or delete articles all together if material is not sourced within 30 days after placing a warning template.
I am no inclusionist, but I see this as a dangerous narrow application of policy that may cost us a lot of lost content that *is* verifiable.
My view is that editors should endeavor in *looking for sources* rather than deleting content that is not sourced. After all, we are here to build an encyclopedia, and the tens of thousands of occasional contributors that do not know of our policies, are after all, those that *add* most of the new material to our project.
This proposal is alarming. As someone who works on articles where academic sources or other secondary works are sometimes difficult, and often don't meet our "Reliable sources" guidelines (I once wrote an article about an MBE whose authorised biography was self-published by a friend of his, making it theoretically verboten under our guidelines), I think it is ridiculous to enforce a blanket deletion on unsourced articles.
As someone who takes an interest in following up on references from time to time, I find it alarming that we may soon see bogus/useless references inserted for the sake of procedure rather than for the sake of providing a reference for interested readers to look into.
Oh, and not to mention that most newbies don't know how/are afraid to cite sources. I myself have reduced my editing quite a bit because I've never managed to find a way to quickly cite a source for some tidbit of info I'd like to add - sometimes I think the {{cite}} templates people insist on using hurt more than help because I have to keep on going to the template page to see what arguments to add.
In short, this is an argument for a blanket deletion. It is a bad idea. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.
Johnleemk
On 7/12/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
Oh, and not to mention that most newbies don't know how/are afraid to cite sources. I myself have reduced my editing quite a bit because I've never managed to find a way to quickly cite a source for some tidbit of info I'd like to add - sometimes I think the {{cite}} templates people insist on using hurt more than help because I have to keep on going to the template page to see what arguments to add.
I usually draft stuff offline, which gives me time to work out all the vagaries of formatting like this, but if I'm working directly on an article and I don't have time to rigorously format the citations, I just stick the bare URL or the book title or whatever inside <ref> tags and come back and fix it later.
The important part about citation is just identifying which parts of the text use which sources, because that's something that can only be done by the person who has written the text (or done all the same research). The formatting can be fixed by others later.
Stephen Bain wrote:
The important part about citation is just identifying which parts of the text use which sources, because that's something that can only be done by the person who has written the text (or done all the same research). The formatting can be fixed by others later.
It may be easier for the original author in many cases, but it's certainly not impossible for other authors to come along later on and dig up references without re-doing all the same research. It can even be easier since one already knows what to look for. Grab a few words from the unsourced text, put them in Google, and in many cases you're 90% of the way there.
There's also the article-writing style where one happens to be a personal expert in the field who knows the stuff backwards and forwards from personal education, and so is able to slap together a solid beginning of an article or section without having to do a bunch of reading. While the result is far from a "finished" article it can often be a very good _start_ to an article.
All in all I think putting some sort of deadline on deleting material tagged with {{fact}} is a very bad idea. If for no other reason than I would never tag anything with {{fact}} again.
Bush-appoointed official muzzled from 2002-2006. Medical and scientific findings manipulated for political ideology. Articles on health, contraception, reproduction, and sex all could be adversely affected. I'd help undo the damage, but I'm blocked precisely because I was trying to undo the damage last year. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070711/ap_on_go_pr_wh/surgeon_general_politics
This also has to do with the current subject "Removal of unsourced material". I agree with the view to delete unsourced material. 30 days is too short, but not unreasonable given that most {fact}s don't show up until well after 30 days.
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On 7/12/07, Cheney Shill halliburton_shill@yahoo.com wrote:
Bush-appoointed official muzzled from 2002-2006. Medical and scientific findings manipulated for political ideology. Articles on health, contraception, reproduction, and sex all could be adversely affected. I'd help undo the damage, but I'm blocked precisely because I was trying to undo the damage last year. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070711/ap_on_go_pr_wh/surgeon_general_politics
Due to european research and publications that isn't really a problem.
Bryan Derksen wrote:
Stephen Bain wrote:
The important part about citation is just identifying which parts of the text use which sources, because that's something that can only be done by the person who has written the text (or done all the same research). The formatting can be fixed by others later.
It may be easier for the original author in many cases, but it's certainly not impossible for other authors to come along later on and dig up references without re-doing all the same research. It can even be easier since one already knows what to look for. Grab a few words from the unsourced text, put them in Google, and in many cases you're 90% of the way there.
There's also the article-writing style where one happens to be a personal expert in the field who knows the stuff backwards and forwards from personal education, and so is able to slap together a solid beginning of an article or section without having to do a bunch of reading. While the result is far from a "finished" article it can often be a very good _start_ to an article.
All in all I think putting some sort of deadline on deleting material tagged with {{fact}} is a very bad idea. If for no other reason than I would never tag anything with {{fact}} again.
I've always been a believer in resisting simple people with simplistic solutions. They are often living exemplars of the maxim. "With friends like these, who needs enemies?" The kind of officious behaviour proposed keeps a lot of good editors away from anything constructive, because they need to be constantly monitoring and babysitting the literalists.
The problems addressed will not normally be fixed by adding references and sources, and going away self-satisfied that all is now well with the world. An article (even one that started with adequate references) may have drifted with successive rewrites and stylistic improvements to something quite different from what was originally said. References that were previously there can end up quite innocently attached to a completely different statement.
An article may have a paragraph about a particular military campaign during the month of October. It starts from a fairly mainstream and easily found historical text and that is properly noted in the references. Later someone adds the specific dates in October when certain elements of the campaign happened, but does not give sources for this additional information, but erroneously and unintentionally leaves the impression that these dates were in the general reference. Nobody is seriously suggesting that the dates are actually wrong.
While there are strong reasons to support the principle that the originator of information is ultimately responsible for the information that he adds, this is not an excuse for others to deny responsibility. Before we can resort to the originator's responsibility as a fail-safe device a lot of efforts by other people should take place before that.
Ec
We're a wiki. The point is collaborative editing. we're supposed to be helping each other write articles, not arguing over responsibility. Everyone coming to edit at WP assumes the obligation to make helpful edits, not detrimental ones, but not necessarily compete edits--not necessarily perfect edits. It is altogether reasonable to come with the intention of starting an article and expecting help to finish it.
Those who complain that articles are unsourced should help the others to source them, not blame hem for writing unsourced articles. The only appropriate thing to do with an unsourced article is to source it, of call it to the attention of those who can.
If the lack of sources is such as to fail to establish that the article is suitable for WP, only then it is appropriate to challenge.
DGG
On 7/12/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
Stephen Bain wrote:
The important part about citation is just identifying which parts of the text use which sources, because that's something that can only be done by the person who has written the text (or done all the same research). The formatting can be fixed by others later.
It may be easier for the original author in many cases, but it's certainly not impossible for other authors to come along later on and dig up references without re-doing all the same research. It can even be easier since one already knows what to look for. Grab a few words from the unsourced text, put them in Google, and in many cases you're 90% of the way there.
There's also the article-writing style where one happens to be a personal expert in the field who knows the stuff backwards and forwards from personal education, and so is able to slap together a solid beginning of an article or section without having to do a bunch of reading. While the result is far from a "finished" article it can often be a very good _start_ to an article.
All in all I think putting some sort of deadline on deleting material tagged with {{fact}} is a very bad idea. If for no other reason than I would never tag anything with {{fact}} again.
I've always been a believer in resisting simple people with simplistic solutions. They are often living exemplars of the maxim. "With friends like these, who needs enemies?" The kind of officious behaviour proposed keeps a lot of good editors away from anything constructive, because they need to be constantly monitoring and babysitting the literalists.
The problems addressed will not normally be fixed by adding references and sources, and going away self-satisfied that all is now well with the world. An article (even one that started with adequate references) may have drifted with successive rewrites and stylistic improvements to something quite different from what was originally said. References that were previously there can end up quite innocently attached to a completely different statement.
An article may have a paragraph about a particular military campaign during the month of October. It starts from a fairly mainstream and easily found historical text and that is properly noted in the references. Later someone adds the specific dates in October when certain elements of the campaign happened, but does not give sources for this additional information, but erroneously and unintentionally leaves the impression that these dates were in the general reference. Nobody is seriously suggesting that the dates are actually wrong.
While there are strong reasons to support the principle that the originator of information is ultimately responsible for the information that he adds, this is not an excuse for others to deny responsibility. Before we can resort to the originator's responsibility as a fail-safe device a lot of efforts by other people should take place before that.
Ec
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Remember, too (as I was just discussing with a Wikipedia editor I met by chance sitting next to me on an airplane today) that our templates which say "Warning: this article/sentence does not adequately cite its source(s)" do *not* necessarily imply, "so you, the editor who wrote it, had better supply some pronto, 'cause the rest of us are just itching to delete it." The more important intent of those templates is to warn the *reader*, and the message is simply, "so sorry, we're less sure of this fact than we'd like to be, so please take it with as many additional grains of salt as you deem necessary."