On Sun, 29 Apr 2007, Todd Allen wrote: This may be true if it's one person demanding one citation. This is not so much the case if someone demands twenty citations, each for a different obvious fact. (Or if they slap "citation needed" on a whole paragraph or section and demand citations for all the obvious facts without trying to list them individually.) It also takes a lot longer than thirty seconds to correctly format a citation. And citations are harder to find than you think. Most sources you'll find in a thirty second search will be self-published web pages, and we can't use self-published sources. Even just figuring out whether or not a web page is self-published within the Wikipedia meaning takes longer than 30 seconds.

I would say that is bad sourcing. It should be possible to find one source for all that information and just cite it at the end of the paragraph. Combining lots of sources like that ends up bordering on OR and can introduce bias.

I would hope that someone adding {{fact}} tags will look at a citation at the end of the paragraph and see if it includes the information they are concerned about. If they don't, then it isn't hard to remove the fact tag.

Some way to show what information is covered by what citation would be excellent - any suggestions? The only things I can think of end up destroying the human readability of the source code (which is bad enough as it is).

: This is a fact[1]. This is another fact[2]. These two facts and indeed another one can be supported : by a single reference. [3] See, that's easy enough to tell that the first two citation markers each apply to the sentence in which they are embedded, and not too difficult to infer that the last applies to the whole paragraph. Sadly it seems to have become the norm to move the markers *after* the concluding punctuation, this leaving it open to interpretation as to whether they might actually to the **following** sentence.

Indeed - and rightly so. Actually it's four fingers and one opposable thumb. Just as well we insist on proper sources, really :o)

As anyone who's written an essay should be able to tell you, one doesn't need to cite general knowledge (defined as anything that a lay person would be able to find in a general reference work on the subject, without any extra information). The response to which in the Wikipedia context is "OMG, but we *are* a general reference work, what do we do?" And the response to that is, link to the article on "hand" (or maybe "finger") through the magic of hypertext, and there the person can find all the details they want.

There was a similar thing on the GameFAQs message boards about Crystallina (who has 20k+ edits) writing a valentine's card. Card: I love you! Crystallina: No, that's POV Card: You are loved! Crystallina: No, that's original research. Card: You are loved on wheels! Crystallina: Goddammit! Or something like that. It goes on.

John Lee wrote: In most cases, the "citation needed" template {{fact}} has nothing to do with the need to cite sources. It's just an ugly way to mark a statement as dubious. It's a visible manifestation of that bubbling turmoil that lies beneath the surface of wiki articles, the turmoil we call the "wiki process". Like {{pov}}, or inconsistent sentences which express a point of view and then discredit it in the same breath, these things are a flag to the reader that this is no ordinary encyclopedia article. There has always been conflict between our need to warn the reader that what they are reading can't be trusted, and our desire for an ultimately clean and professional presentation. Over time, Wikipedia has moved in the former direction, towards bolder and more visible warnings, which is not something I would have predicted back in 2003. Personally I would prefer to see some movement in the other direction, towards clean presentation. I understand that uglying up an article while keeping your point in can be an attractive compromise to editors involved in disputes. I certainly made similar compromises while I was an editor. At least the use of templates should make it possible to remove these notices in bulk from published versions of Wikipedia. -- Tim Starling _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

And there lies a problem. Too many people tag material they find dubious when just a little research would avoid a lot of mess. Before you tag anything, you should check the refs of the paragraph and the article to see if it's covered already and think for yourself. Is it really that dubious?

I could cite the fact the sky is blue, but citing it is nonsense. Anyone who knows what [[blue]] is should be able to make that determination for themselves.

Is that a humoristic stab at the British or am I missing something?

Is that a humoristic stab at the British or am I missing something?

>geni wrote: >On 5/1/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic(a)gmail.com> wrote: >>I could cite the fact the sky is blue, but citing it is nonsense. Anyone

It's worse than 50:50 in most of the world when you take into account that it's black at night

On 4/30/07, Tim Starling <tstarling(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: the My observation is the opposite. Our unreferenced tags are drifting towards the bottom of the article, rather than the top. Many other tags are migrating towards the talk page rather than the article itself. Our "expand this article" tags are disappearing altogether. I do wish we more use of explicit "disputed" tags instead of the rather passive-aggressive "citation needed" tag, though.