On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 5:47 PM, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
Gwern Branwen wrote:
On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 3:42 PM, Charles
Matthews
<charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
quiddity wrote:
What to do about someone who has "lost the
plot"?
For example, this editor seems to be going from article to article,
deleting every prose paragraph that doesn't have a ref tag (usually
everything except the intro sentence).
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&offset=…
Some of the content being removed is obviously not good (selfpromoting
peacockery etc), but much is perfectly fine, and this seems to be one
of the worst (most indiscriminate) ways to handle the hypothetical
problem.
Suggest that one can drive-by even faster in adding {{fact}}? I think
this is the first step, the suggestion that identifying unsourced facts
is a way of achieving a similar end, and that we can all applaud it when
properly done.
Charles
And where does the {{fact}}-bombing end?
[[Medici bank]] is as finely referenced an article as I have ever (or
likely will ever) written with 96 footnotes, multiple books & papers
consulted, and extensive quoting - yet the overwhelming majority of
sentences lack <ref> tags and are presumably candidates for bombing.
Well, I think that in a well-written, well-sourced article people should
be still allowed to ask for further references. I foolishly copied the
basics of [[List of dissenting academies]] out of a book, thinking it
was a cheap article; and so far have added about 120 footnotes and
created around 50 articles at Wikisource to support it. Just shows where
these things can lead.
I actually had big problems with inline referencing style when it was a
hot potato, and I did start putting articles together sentence by
sentence. There were reassurances that it was not going to lead to
"lame" writing, and I think those were overdone (more precisely, in an
area where there is plenty of academic research at book length, you will
probably by OK, but that's quite a limitation). OTOH inline referenced
writing is now the house style, and actually there are worse things:
concision is good, and fact-checked encyclopedia articles are good, and
the fact that articles are never finished is a given.
Charles
The problem is not that the article is not finished, the problem is
our guidelines allow wikilawyers to demand that the map be the
territory.
[[WP:ZEN]]:
'Once, a novice was meditating over a guideline, when Gwern came
by. The novice was tossed an unreferenced line from a plot summary.
Gwern said, "If you do not reference this, it is unsourced and must be
removed. But if you do reference it with a quote from the story, it is
a copyvio and so must be removed. Now quickly! What do you do?"'
Our guidelines make a weak nod toward 'hey guys don't be a WP:DICK
mmkay?' but do not ever countermand the strong injunctions towards
sourcing. This is not helped by the extremist statements by people
like Jimbo that material without a <ref> is to be considered guilty
until proven innocent. An editor can go to an article and challenge
unremarked material of ancient provenance sentence by sentence*, and
there is no point at which a good editor can say to her, 'You have sat
too long for any good you have been doing lately... Depart, I say; and
let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!'
Our guidelines assume a binary - something is referenced or
unreferenced. An article is referenced or unreferenced. Magical
thinking ('if we just delete all unreferenced BLPs, we will have
improved article quality *obviously*!').
There is, of course, nothing that is completely 'referenced' - if I
state the Medici bank used bills of draft payable in florins on the
Bruges branch, and I cite de Rouver 1987, it can be object that I
haven't really referenced it; if I provide page number, they can fall
back on 'does the ref say Bruges? florins? Medici bank? bills of
drat?'; if I provide quotes, they can employ copyright paranoia; and
so on.
Nor is there anything completely unreferenced; if I assert Star Wars
canon has multiple levels, the references - though inaccessible to me
now and never to be included in the article - are the many books and
articles I've read about Star Wars. Referencing is a long continuum
with nothing at either end.
* It is worth noting that the administrator Lars, involved in deleting
BLPs, has claimed that WP:SILENCE has its exact opposite meaning in
BLP articles - material that has gone unremarked & unchallenged for
years is actually highly controversial, and not anodyne & acceptable.
--
gwern