"Peter Jacobi" peter_jacobi@gmx.net
In the unlikely case anyone interested has missed it: There are some troubles re mandatory in-line citing and science articles.
It all started with a warning put at large number of "good articles" that they will be delisted soon for lack of in-line cites. This immediately got the response, that standard textbooks facts are not and should not be in-line cited, the references section will name selected textbooks and one cannot judge the correctness without having some context anyway.
It is certainly foolish in many cases, and make-work, to reference specific and uncontroversial well-known facts. What is more it will tend to make articles unreadable, and effectively unwriteable also. This style is essentially only fit for very careful writing in doctoral dissertations with particularly terrifying examiners in mind.
It seems clear that enWP could get overrun by nutty lawyering types, if a firm line is not taken. Is there not a 'statute of limitations' of sorts appropriate? When a piece of science is over 50 years old, one expects to read about the details of the original papers in a historical article. And the chances are that there are so many textbook citations that picking just one isn't a great help to students.
Charles
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In addition, in my view, adding specific citations can be misleading for widely believed/understood/known facts.
For instance, if I write that "Anthony Newcomb says that Alfonso Fontanelli was one of the foremost madrigalists of 16th century Italy", or in other words "Alfonso Fontanelli was one of the foremonst madrigalists of 16th century Italy<ref>Newcomb blah blah</ref>", that implies that other major scholars of music in 16th century Italy such as Alfred Einstein, do /not/ believe that Fontanelli was a foremost madrigalist, which isn't the case. It's widely thought that he was. It shouldn't need an inline citation, because all the major sources agree on it.
But since practically no-one on-wiki is an expert on 16th century Italian music, they insist on inline citations, so that someone could potentially go "check" that "fact". I think inline citations can be very important, but I don't think every single factual assertion in an article should have to have an inline citation, especially when an article really is simply echoing accepted non-controversial scholarship, such as, for instance, [[Dido and Aeneas]], which just received a GA review request for inline citations. It's getting ridiculous.
[[User:Makemi]]
On 9/29/06, charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
"Peter Jacobi" peter_jacobi@gmx.net
In the unlikely case anyone interested has missed it: There are some troubles re mandatory in-line citing and science articles.
It all started with a warning put at large number of "good articles" that they will be delisted soon for lack of in-line cites. This immediately got the response, that standard textbooks facts are not and should not be in-line cited, the references section will name selected textbooks and one cannot judge the correctness without having some context anyway.
It is certainly foolish in many cases, and make-work, to reference specific and uncontroversial well-known facts. What is more it will tend to make articles unreadable, and effectively unwriteable also. This style is essentially only fit for very careful writing in doctoral dissertations with particularly terrifying examiners in mind.
It seems clear that enWP could get overrun by nutty lawyering types, if a firm line is not taken. Is there not a 'statute of limitations' of sorts appropriate? When a piece of science is over 50 years old, one expects to read about the details of the original papers in a historical article. And the chances are that there are so many textbook citations that picking just one isn't a great help to students.
Charles
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On 29/09/06, Mak makwik@gmail.com wrote:
But since practically no-one on-wiki is an expert on 16th century Italian music, they insist on inline citations, so that someone could potentially go "check" that "fact". I think inline citations can be very important, but I don't think every single factual assertion in an article should have to have an inline citation, especially when an article really is simply echoing accepted non-controversial scholarship, such as, for instance, [[Dido and Aeneas]], which just received a GA review request for inline citations. It's getting ridiculous.
This needs posting to WT:FAC. They get attacks of weird fashion in citation format that spread out through the wiki.
I mean, I see their point: verifiability. Ideally, there should be a secondary source that already says "was widely considered". But it can get stupid, yes.
- d.
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Mak wrote:
It shouldn't need an inline citation, because all the major sources agree on it.
But since practically no-one on-wiki is an expert on 16th century Italian music, they insist on inline citations, so that someone could potentially go "check" that "fact". I think inline citations can be very important, but I don't think every single factual assertion in an article should have to have an inline citation, especially when an article really is simply echoing accepted non-controversial scholarship, such as, for instance, [[Dido and Aeneas]], which just received a GA review request for inline citations. It's getting ridiculous.
First of all, if 'all the major sources agree on' a particular fact, then where is the problem in citing one of them? Good Articles need to demonstrate compliance with the Manual of Style at the very least (if not all the other various guidelines on different issue) - and if people had followed [[WP:CITE]] in the first place then there wouldn't be the problem with the GA review, would there? It's not as if it is a brand new guideline that may be under dispute or unknown - WP:CITE has been around since 2002, if some editors decided to ignore it then it's no surprise that others objected to their work being elevated to GA status.
Cynical
I've just attempted to explain why having inline citations can be misleading. If a fact is widely agreed on, and you ascribe it to a single source or author, it makes it seem as though that person is the sole proponent of that idea, when in fact pretty much everyone in the field is in agreement.
If you look at [[Dido and Aeneas]] you will see that it does cite it's sources. In the oh-so-cryptically named "References" section. It does not have inline citations because when I wrote the majority of the article, I was 1) brand new 2) inline citations had not become all the rage 3) *it doesn't contain controversial assertions. No one has challenged a single fact in the article. If you know anything about either the work or Purcell or English Baroque music, you probably won't challenge any of the article's assertions because they are *not* controversial.
I'll say it again. [[Dido and Aeneas]] cites its sources in the form of references. If you want to check anything, all you have to do is look at a fairly short article in Grove and a fairly short introduction in an edition. It doesn't give inline citations because it doesn't say anything controversial, and no one has challenged anything in it.
Makemi
On 9/29/06, David Russell webmaster@davidarussell.co.uk wrote:
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Mak wrote:
It shouldn't need an inline citation, because all the major sources agree on it.
But since practically no-one on-wiki is an expert on 16th century
Italian
music, they insist on inline citations, so that someone could
potentially go
"check" that "fact". I think inline citations can be very important, but
I
don't think every single factual assertion in an article should have to
have
an inline citation, especially when an article really is simply echoing accepted non-controversial scholarship, such as, for instance, [[Dido
and
Aeneas]], which just received a GA review request for inline citations.
It's
getting ridiculous.
First of all, if 'all the major sources agree on' a particular fact, then where is the problem in citing one of them? Good Articles need to demonstrate compliance with the Manual of Style at the very least (if not all the other various guidelines on different issue) - and if people had followed [[WP:CITE]] in the first place then there wouldn't be the problem with the GA review, would there? It's not as if it is a brand new guideline that may be under dispute or unknown - WP:CITE has been around since 2002, if some editors decided to ignore it then it's no surprise that others objected to their work being elevated to GA status.
Cynical -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
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Mak wrote:
I'll say it again. [[Dido and Aeneas]] cites its sources in the form of references. If you want to check anything, all you have to do is look at a fairly short article in Grove and a fairly short introduction in an edition. It doesn't give inline citations because it doesn't say anything controversial, and no one has challenged anything in it.
That seems reasonable to me, and I think this is a major problem with the current wikilawyering approach to footnotes (which bears resemblance to the footnote-heavy style of pedantic academic writing that's mostly fallen out of fashion in academia itself). Footnotes make sense when a specific claim should be attributed to a specific source, especially if it's controversial. Even some non-controversial claims could use footnote citations, such as dating an ancient battle to a specific date (cite a generally-accepted timeline). When I'm writing articles that contain no unusual or controversial claims, though, it seems silly to keep using footnotes after every sentence, so I just place the reference in the "References" section.
Interestingly, this is standard style in most of the technical articles, maybe because the pedants know not to poke their head in there. Most good mathematics articles contain a footnote-free exposition of the subject, with some references at the end, and footnotes only to point out where authorities disagree, where there's a significant minority view, or to point to particularly notable proofs.
-Mark
On 29/09/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Footnotes make sense when a specific claim should be attributed to a specific source, especially if it's controversial. Interestingly, this is standard style in most of the technical articles, maybe because the pedants know not to poke their head in there. Most good mathematics articles contain a footnote-free exposition of the subject, with some references at the end, and footnotes only to point out where authorities disagree, where there's a significant minority view, or to point to particularly notable proofs.
Depends. I've learnt to use defensive inline references in articles on recent technology because people will argue over *anything* ;-) Mind you, that's more a specialised variety of current-events article.
- d.
On 9/29/06, Mak makwik@gmail.com wrote:
I've just attempted to explain why having inline citations can be misleading. If a fact is widely agreed on, and you ascribe it to a single source or author, it makes it seem as though that person is the sole proponent of that idea, when in fact pretty much everyone in the field is in agreement.
You don't have to list just one person in the citation. What's wrong with including <ref>This is accepted by virtually all scholars, including Einstein in ''Book X'', Murphy in ''Article Y'', and Jones in "Article Z''.</ref> Then put the bibliographic information in the references section, as usual.
Also, in response to the original post, citations do more than just serve as a way to verify the facts of an article. They also show where the material came from, which is helpful for anyone doing research on a topic (high school, college, etc.) who can't directly cite Wikipedia (not many teachers allow that). Our articles need to be written so that they can be used by as many people as possible, and I think that one way to do that is to religiously cite sources.
Nathaniel ([[User:Spangineer]], a real nuisance to many on FAC when it comes to citations)
On 29/09/06, Nathaniel Sheetz preparing@psu.edu wrote:
Also, in response to the original post, citations do more than just serve as a way to verify the facts of an article. They also show where the material came from, which is helpful for anyone doing research on a topic (high school, college, etc.) who can't directly cite Wikipedia (not many teachers allow that). Our articles need to be written so that they can be used by as many people as possible, and I think that one way to do that is to religiously cite sources.
A separate ==Sources== section can be good for this.
Nathaniel ([[User:Spangineer]], a real nuisance to many on FAC when it comes to citations)
Verifiability is important and in most cases, references are *good* - the reader has no idea who the authors are, so only has the text and maybe what references are clickable to figure out the text's value from. Do please continue :-)
- d.
On 9/29/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Verifiability is important and in most cases, references are *good* - the reader has no idea who the authors are, so only has the text and maybe what references are clickable to figure out the text's value from. Do please continue :-)
- d.
What citations do is massively simplify the process of verifying any given statement. If a statement is not specifically cited, it could, for all the reader knows, come from anywhere in any of the books used as references, which, on most articles, would be a large amount of material to go through looking for confirmation of one specific statement. A citation to single web page or page in a book or journal, on the other hand, makes it possible for the reader, or another editor, to quickly check the accuracy of that statement. A while ago, I briefly attempted to check the accuracy of a few cited facts in every article that came through FAC; I eventually couldn't keep up, but while I was at it I was able to correct a few factual errors in articles, despite knowing nothing about the subject, because of good citations. (I also found out that a startling number of citations did not point to anything that verified the article's statements, but that's a different issue.)
The problem is to balance the desire for this kind of verifiability with the desire not to clutter up the article excessively. It's convenient for me that this issue comes up now, because I was thinking about this last night while I was writing; the result can be seen at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Arginusae. To summarize, I think it's possible to cite just about every statement in an article to a small page range in a specific source by using notes that say "Unless noted otherwise, all details given here regarding X topic can be found in Y source, pp.234-250", and, as several other people have noted, it's possible to show scholarly consensus by saying something like "The account given here is that preferred by modern scholars; see X Source, 123-140, Y source, 522-543, and Z source, 90-100". By getting slightly creative with footnotes in this way, it's possible to produce an article that's thoroughly cited without being misleading about the origins of its statements.
Now if anybody wants to take on an actually pointless MoS requirement, I'm currently signing up able-bodied individuals for my crusade against the proscription on starting section headers with the definite article...
On Fri, 2006-09-29 at 14:15 -0400, Robth wrote:
The problem is to balance the desire for this kind of verifiability with the desire not to clutter up the article excessively.
What's wrong with a technical solution? Write the article with lots of inline references, but make it a user preference whether or not to show them.
On Sep 29, 2006, at 3:26 PM, Jake Waskett wrote:
On Fri, 2006-09-29 at 14:15 -0400, Robth wrote:
The problem is to balance the desire for this kind of verifiability with the desire not to clutter up the article excessively.
What's wrong with a technical solution? Write the article with lots of inline references, but make it a user preference whether or not to show them.
Go write the code.
-Phil
Phil Sandifer wrote:
On Sep 29, 2006, at 3:26 PM, Jake Waskett wrote:
On Fri, 2006-09-29 at 14:15 -0400, Robth wrote:
The problem is to balance the desire for this kind of verifiability with the desire not to clutter up the article excessively.
What's wrong with a technical solution? Write the article with lots of inline references, but make it a user preference whether or not to show them.
Go write the code.
You're being needlessly brusque, and also misleading. Do you mean that only people who have the time and ability to actually do Wikimedia programming get to decide what Wikipedia looks like and how it functions? If I were to sit down and write the code to add a preference allowing users to add blink tags to all wikilinks, that'd go in without any discussion by non-coders? I wouldn't think so. Programmers with any sense of professionalism should pay at least a little attention to what the users of their software say about it.
That all said, I just checked the source HTML and see that references have 'class="reference"' in the <sup> tags. I suspect a very simple stylesheet change is all that's needed, not something that would trouble programmers.
On 9/29/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
That all said, I just checked the source HTML and see that references have 'class="reference"' in the <sup> tags. I suspect a very simple stylesheet change is all that's needed, not something that would trouble programmers.
A crude form would be:
.reference { display: none; }
.references { display: none; }
This isn't perfect, since it leaves a "Notes" header in place in articles that have it; but it should suffice for the people who *really* don't like footnotes.
Kirill Lokshin wrote:
This isn't perfect, since it leaves a "Notes" header in place in articles that have it; but it should suffice for the people who *really* don't like footnotes.
If you just use
.reference { display: none; }
Then the footnotes remain visible at the bottom of the article but the superscripted links within the article itself vanish. It's still not quite perfect since the footnotes' backlinks remain but no longer work, however it's getting pretty close to what I expect a preference like the one proposed would do.
On Fri, 2006-09-29 at 19:37 -0600, Bryan Derksen wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
On Sep 29, 2006, at 3:26 PM, Jake Waskett wrote:
On Fri, 2006-09-29 at 14:15 -0400, Robth wrote:
The problem is to balance the desire for this kind of verifiability with the desire not to clutter up the article excessively.
What's wrong with a technical solution? Write the article with lots of inline references, but make it a user preference whether or not to show them.
Go write the code.
You're being needlessly brusque, and also misleading. Do you mean that only people who have the time and ability to actually do Wikimedia programming get to decide what Wikipedia looks like and how it functions? If I were to sit down and write the code to add a preference allowing users to add blink tags to all wikilinks, that'd go in without any discussion by non-coders? I wouldn't think so. Programmers with any sense of professionalism should pay at least a little attention to what the users of their software say about it.
That all said, I just checked the source HTML and see that references have 'class="reference"' in the <sup> tags. I suspect a very simple stylesheet change is all that's needed, not something that would trouble programmers.
That would be great, if it worked, but as others have pointed out, it might not be achievable.
Personally, I'm not familiar with the Wiki code, and I don't intend to dive in and break it, but my suggestion needn't be too difficult to implement. I'd be grateful if someone would forward this to the appropriate list where developers can read it.
1. Add a 'reference_level' field to the users table. 2. When generating a page, read this field at the same time as performing the new messages check. If the user is not logged in, set a sensible default. 3. When generating the HTML for a <ref>, check that the reference_level permits it. A straightforward implementation would have level 0 = no refs, 1 = show refs. For extra credit, allow 'important' references to be specified, and allow the levels: 0 = none, 1 = important only, 2 = all refs. 4. Add appropriate user preferences.
Jake
Robth wrote:
What citations do is massively simplify the process of verifying any given statement. If a statement is not specifically cited, it could, for all the reader knows, come from anywhere in any of the books used as references, which, on most articles, would be a large amount of material to go through looking for confirmation of one specific statement.
In the case in question, though, only a handful of short articles were cited, so this isn't an issue.
-Mark
Looking at the things tagged by the reviewer (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special_relativity&diff=781074...), almost every single one would warrant a "This is accepted by virtually all scholars" note. Where does it end? Should every factual statement have such a tag? Surely students can figure out what a References section is and just pick up one of those books.
I'm am very pro-citation when it helps us build a better encyclopedia, but I'm anti-"let's footnote everything even though it appears in any textbook on the subject and is totally uncontroversial, just to satisfy a process decision".
On 9/29/06, Nathaniel Sheetz preparing@psu.edu wrote:
On 9/29/06, Mak makwik@gmail.com wrote:
I've just attempted to explain why having inline citations can be misleading. If a fact is widely agreed on, and you ascribe it to a single source or author, it makes it seem as though that person is the sole proponent of that idea, when in fact pretty much everyone in the field is in agreement.
You don't have to list just one person in the citation. What's wrong with including <ref>This is accepted by virtually all scholars, including Einstein in ''Book X'', Murphy in ''Article Y'', and Jones in "Article Z''.</ref> Then put the bibliographic information in the references section, as usual.
Also, in response to the original post, citations do more than just serve as a way to verify the facts of an article. They also show where the material came from, which is helpful for anyone doing research on a topic (high school, college, etc.) who can't directly cite Wikipedia (not many teachers allow that). Our articles need to be written so that they can be used by as many people as possible, and I think that one way to do that is to religiously cite sources.
Nathaniel ([[User:Spangineer]], a real nuisance to many on FAC when it comes to citations) _______________________________________________ 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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Mak wrote:
I've just attempted to explain why having inline citations can be misleading. If a fact is widely agreed on, and you ascribe it to a single source or author, it makes it seem as though that person is the sole proponent of that idea, when in fact pretty much everyone in the field is in agreement.
If you look at [[Dido and Aeneas]] you will see that it does cite it's sources. In the oh-so-cryptically named "References" section. It does not have inline citations because when I wrote the majority of the article, I was 1) brand new 2) inline citations had not become all the rage 3) *it doesn't contain controversial assertions. No one has challenged a single fact in the article. If you know anything about either the work or Purcell or English Baroque music, you probably won't challenge any of the article's assertions because they are *not* controversial.
Would it be all that hard to provide a specific page reference as a footnote. e.g. (hypothetical example) <ref>See, for example, J. Doe /Origins of Somethingorother/ p.29, J. Bloggs /Somethingorother explained p.60</ref>.</ref>? And there is no need to cite a source after every fact - after every paragraph or subtopic would be fine. But no citations is unlikely to result in a successful GA review, at least unless/until the proposed changes to the GA criteria are accepted.
Cynical
David Russell
<snip> Would it be all that hard to provide a specific page reference as a footnote. e.g. (hypothetical example) <ref>See, for example, J. Doe /Origins of Somethingorother/ p.29, J. Bloggs /Somethingorother explained p.60</ref>.</ref>? And there is no need to cite a source after every fact - after every paragraph or subtopic would be fine. But no citations is unlikely to result in a successful GA review, at least unless/until the proposed changes to the GA criteria are accepted. </snip>
Inline citations have now been added to Dido and Aeneas, easily enough (there are no page numbers given, because Grove online doesn't have page numbers, and this particular article is short enough to not have sub-sections). The point is that if reasonable references are given, inline citations should not be necessary for uncontroversial facts. If you look at actual encyclopedias, you will notice that they don't have inline references, especially for generally accepted facts.
Please not that I am not against inline references, and I am a big fan of creating good bibliographies for articles. I just think the current fashion of requiring an inline citation for every little thing is not helpful or productive. I think it lessens the usefulness of inline citations, because they are splattered everywhere. It's not that I /can't/ do it, it's just that I think adding inline citations for each fact in an article misrepresents the nature of the information. Generally, in actual academic artilces, inline citations are used for comments, or controversial material. If the accepted reference work is given in the references section, every piece of information taken from that source shouldn't need to be cited to that source specifically.
User:Makemi
Oh, and on a slightly different note, when I made an experiment of extremely close citations on [[Concerto delle donne]] (now an FA), when other users, even experienced ones with advanced degrees, edited the text, they would move information without moving the correct citation. The only resolution to that I could find was to attach references to single sentences, which as you can see results in an article with a list of citations practically as long as the article. And this is on a fairly non-controversial topic. Makemi
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Mak wrote:
The only resolution to that I could find was to attach references to single sentences, which as you can see results in an article with a list of citations practically as long as the article. And this is on a fairly non-controversial topic. Makemi
Fine - since the list of citations appears at the end of the article, nobody has to read it if they don't want to.
Cynical
On 9/29/06, Mak makwik@gmail.com wrote:
Inline citations have now been added to Dido and Aeneas, easily enough (there are no page numbers given, because Grove online doesn't have page numbers, and this particular article is short enough to not have sub-sections). The point is that if reasonable references are given, inline citations should not be necessary for uncontroversial facts. If you look at actual encyclopedias, you will notice that they don't have inline references, especially for generally accepted facts.
That's true, but is also misleading. You don't see those references in the *end product*.
But encyclopedia's do check the sources of their statements. I highly recommend that you listen to this:
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Archives Validation on Wikipedia: How do I know this article is accurate?
1) An expert writes an article. 2) A fact checker checks *every statement* in the article from at least 2 reliable sources and documents all of them on a newspaper sized sheet where the article text is in the middle of the sheet and the rest contains the references, annotations, recommended changes. All this material is kept for later editors. (Forward to 27:00 in the MP3).
Yet, the reader doesn't see all those inline references in the end product. But they can trust that this validation does happen throughout the editing process. A Wikipedia reader doesn't have that luxury, they can't tell apart checked facts and sneaky vandalism inserted 2 minutes ago.
Inline references are very important. Much more important for Wikipedia than the published version of a traditional encyclopedia.
-- nyenyec
Nyenyec N wrote:
On 9/29/06, Mak makwik@gmail.com wrote:
Inline citations have now been added to Dido and Aeneas, easily enough (there are no page numbers given, because Grove online doesn't have page numbers, and this particular article is short enough to not have sub-sections). The point is that if reasonable references are given, inline citations should not be necessary for uncontroversial facts. If you look at actual encyclopedias, you will notice that they don't have inline references, especially for generally accepted facts.
That's true, but is also misleading. You don't see those references in the *end product*.
But encyclopedia's do check the sources of their statements. I highly recommend that you listen to this:
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Archives Validation on Wikipedia: How do I know this article is accurate?
- An expert writes an article.
- A fact checker checks *every statement* in the article from at
least 2 reliable sources and documents all of them on a newspaper sized sheet where the article text is in the middle of the sheet and the rest contains the references, annotations, recommended changes. All this material is kept for later editors. (Forward to 27:00 in the MP3).
Excellent. Where do I sign up?
Ooops, sorry, it's late here.
There wad a missing paragraph from my original email.
It is the chief editor (I think) of World Book Encyclopedia speaking about how *they* deal with validation and fact checking. They are the ones who already use this approach.
-- nyenyec
On 10/1/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Nyenyec N wrote:
On 9/29/06, Mak makwik@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
actual encyclopedias, you will notice that they don't have inline references, especially for generally accepted facts.
That's true, but is also misleading. You don't see those references in the *end product*.
But encyclopedia's do check the sources of their statements. I highly recommend that you listen to this:
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Archives Validation on Wikipedia: How do I know this article is accurate?
- An expert writes an article.
- A fact checker checks *every statement* in the article from at
least 2 reliable sources and documents all of them on a newspaper sized sheet where the article text is in the middle of the sheet and the rest contains the references, annotations, recommended changes. All this material is kept for later editors. (Forward to 27:00 in the MP3).
Excellent. Where do I sign up?
-- Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
On Sep 29, 2006, at 12:34 PM, David Russell wrote:
First of all, if 'all the major sources agree on' a particular fact, then where is the problem in citing one of them? Good Articles need to demonstrate compliance with the Manual of Style at the very least (if not all the other various guidelines on different issue)
Baloney. MoS is a hellhole of process - exactly what Good Articles were made to get around. Good Articles need to be pretty darn good - not perfectly adhere to an absurd bit of process that grew organically in a manner similar to kudzu.
- and if people
had followed [[WP:CITE]] in the first place then there wouldn't be the problem with the GA review, would there? It's not as if it is a brand new guideline that may be under dispute or unknown - WP:CITE has been around since 2002, if some editors decided to ignore it then it's no surprise that others objected to their work being elevated to GA status.
[[WP:CITE]] is unfollowable - both because it's impossible to edit practically while citing a source every line, and because it's another piece of crap MoS page.
-Phil
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Phil Sandifer wrote:
Baloney. MoS is a hellhole of process - exactly what Good Articles were made to get around. Good Articles need to be pretty darn good - not perfectly adhere to an absurd bit of process that grew organically in a manner similar to kudzu.
Er... if Good Articles were meant to get around MoS then why is citation of sources one of the Good Article criteria?
Cynical
On 29/09/06, David Russell webmaster@davidarussell.co.uk wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
Baloney. MoS is a hellhole of process - exactly what Good Articles were made to get around. Good Articles need to be pretty darn good - not perfectly adhere to an absurd bit of process that grew organically in a manner similar to kudzu.
Er... if Good Articles were meant to get around MoS then why is citation of sources one of the Good Article criteria?
Because it failed in its attempt to be a lightweight parallel process.
- d.
On 9/29/06, charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
"Peter Jacobi" peter_jacobi@gmx.net
In the unlikely case anyone interested has missed it: There are some troubles re mandatory in-line citing and science articles.
It all started with a warning put at large number of "good articles" that they will be delisted soon for lack of in-line cites. This immediately got the response, that standard textbooks facts are not and should not be in-line cited, the references section will name selected textbooks and one cannot judge the correctness without having some context anyway.
It is certainly foolish in many cases, and make-work, to reference specific and uncontroversial well-known facts. What is more it will tend to make articles unreadable, and effectively unwriteable also. This style is essentially only fit for very careful writing in doctoral dissertations with particularly terrifying examiners in mind.
It seems clear that enWP could get overrun by nutty lawyering types, if a firm line is not taken. Is there not a 'statute of limitations' of sorts appropriate? When a piece of science is over 50 years old, one expects to read about the details of the original papers in a historical article. And the chances are that there are so many textbook citations that picking just one isn't a great help to students.
The other consideration for standard textbook references is that there may be a dozen or more references to a single textbook (or indeed, the article could be based entirely on one or two textbooks), which is cumbersome to cite in-line. While using the reference name shortcut shortens things up, it's still very tedious (and very distracting) if about every other sentence has a citation link and every equation present has a citation link.
Carl