But who is heard when people read a Wikipedia article? *An expert* is not heard, that is, no particular expert is heard, because we have no attribution. Cited sources are heard, where sources are cited, for a particular sentence. But even then we get citation creep when those sentences are not enquoted. That is, people will modify or hitch a ride on a sentence with additional quips not found in the underlying source.

So in our Marilyn Monroe article we *had* cited a source claiming that her father's country of origin was cited as Norway on her birth certificate. Which is a claim with no evidence. And the source cited, did not state this either. Someone had hitched that "Norway" onto a sentence which had simply read that her father's name was Mortenson on her birth cert. A casual reader cannot disentangle these overlying changes, but may assume this is the voice of the cited expert. I fail to see how when reading any of our articles, a person is actually reading the words of any particular expert.

In a *relatively few* articles sources are cited and the actual extracted sentence is enquoted. Those I find the most useful, as you can be fairly sure the source actually states what the quoted sentence states, without repeating the look-up.

Will Johnson

In a message dated 8/2/2009 9:24:53 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, lunasantin@gmail.com writes:

I don't think I'd ever go chiding someone over it, but he brings up a solid point: if you hope to be heard, you need to speak in such a way that people will listen -- this may sometimes include speaking *where* people will listen.

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