I fear that the way this contrast is set up, we could never reach agreement on a good policy. Of course no cite is better than a bad cite, because we do not want to give credibility to unreliable sources, or even direct people there way. The problem is there are many citations where people will vociferously argue whether they are good or bad.
I think the only way to proceed is to instead distinguish between "controversial cites" and "uncontroversial cites." Both can be provided; if a cite is controversial we simply explain what the nature of the controversy is (something we are all well-practiced in doing already, to comply with the NPOV policy in writing articles.
S
Steven L. Rubenstein Associate Professor Department of Sociology and Anthropology Bentley Annex Ohio University Athens, Ohio 45701
steven l. rubenstein wrote
I think the only way to proceed is to instead distinguish between "controversial cites" and "uncontroversial cites."
I don't want to pretend that the problems here are either slight or unimportant. But there seems to be a whole tangle here, about editors wishing to prove points.
If one is not 'pushing the envelope' of what is easy to substantiate, with quotations from mainstream sources, then there should be little practical difficulty. Otherwise - well, a POV may be being pushed, or an article may be being dragged onto contentious ground. Are we not seeing Wikipedians trying to get beyond 'some say A, others B', by knocking down B?
Anyway, citations are a means to an end. They are supposed to aid fact-checkers, not to build up a case. I realise that the debates that go on do mean people think they must present a winning case on some matters. As ever, though, that is not what we come here for.
Charles
One problem I've found with regard to citing sources is the current lack of support in MediaWiki for automatically numbered footnotes.
There are a couple of controversial articles I've been involved in editing for which I would like to go through with a fine toothed comb citing sources. My job would be made much easier if I could use automatically numbered footnotes in tandem with comprehensive templates such as {{Web reference|title=|work=|URL=|date=|year=}}.
I'm betting that once there is such support we'll find a huge upsurge in the quality of citing.
[[Wikipedia:Cite sources]] [[Wikipedia:Footnote2#Proposed future enhancements - autogeneration]]
Christiaan
Looks like a splendid idea. I was thinking about something similar just the other day (I'm not a Wiki developer, but am a software engineer).
What would be good would be the ability to add a tag to references, so as long as someone defined a tag somewhere in the page it could be references by simply including that tag. This flexibility would mean that the software would have to parse the text twice during page generation, unfortunately. Adapting for Wiki, since mine was for a different document description language, but it could work something like:
No definition: {{Web reference|title=|work=|URL=|date=|year=}}
Definition and first (or any) use: {{tag=Web reference|title=|work=|URL=| date=|year=}}
Tag form: {{=tag}}
Feasibility could be demonstrated by writing a script that takes this form of Wiki input and generates the current form of Wiki input. Should be a relatively simple job. I might give it a whirl when the mood next takes me.
I would certainly use it.
Jake.
On Saturday 29 January 2005 23:23, Christiaan Briggs wrote:
One problem I've found with regard to citing sources is the current lack of support in MediaWiki for automatically numbered footnotes.
There are a couple of controversial articles I've been involved in editing for which I would like to go through with a fine toothed comb citing sources. My job would be made much easier if I could use automatically numbered footnotes in tandem with comprehensive templates such as {{Web reference|title=|work=|URL=|date=|year=}}.
I'm betting that once there is such support we'll find a huge upsurge in the quality of citing.
[[Wikipedia:Cite sources]] [[Wikipedia:Footnote2#Proposed future enhancements - autogeneration]]
Christiaan
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Have a poke round [[Wikipedia:Footnotes]] Jake. There seems to be a lot of this discussion going on there at present.
Christiaan
On 29 Jan 2005, at 11:39 pm, Jake Waskett wrote:
Looks like a splendid idea. I was thinking about something similar just the other day (I'm not a Wiki developer, but am a software engineer).
What would be good would be the ability to add a tag to references, so as long as someone defined a tag somewhere in the page it could be references by simply including that tag. This flexibility would mean that the software would have to parse the text twice during page generation, unfortunately. Adapting for Wiki, since mine was for a different document description language, but it could work something like:
No definition: {{Web reference|title=|work=|URL=|date=|year=}}
Definition and first (or any) use: {{tag=Web reference|title=|work=|URL=| date=|year=}}
Tag form: {{=tag}}
Feasibility could be demonstrated by writing a script that takes this form of Wiki input and generates the current form of Wiki input. Should be a relatively simple job. I might give it a whirl when the mood next takes me.
I would certainly use it.
Jake.
On Saturday 29 January 2005 23:23, Christiaan Briggs wrote:
One problem I've found with regard to citing sources is the current lack of support in MediaWiki for automatically numbered footnotes.
There are a couple of controversial articles I've been involved in editing for which I would like to go through with a fine toothed comb citing sources. My job would be made much easier if I could use automatically numbered footnotes in tandem with comprehensive templates such as {{Web reference|title=|work=|URL=|date=|year=}}.
I'm betting that once there is such support we'll find a huge upsurge in the quality of citing.
[[Wikipedia:Cite sources]] [[Wikipedia:Footnote2#Proposed future enhancements - autogeneration]]
Christiaan
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
steven l. rubenstein said:
I fear that the way this contrast is set up, we could never reach agreement on a good policy. Of course no cite is better than a bad cite, because we do not want to give credibility to unreliable sources, or even direct people there way. The problem is there are many citations where people will vociferously argue whether they are good or bad.
I think the only way to proceed is to instead distinguish between "controversial cites" and "uncontroversial cites." Both can be provided; if a cite is controversial we simply explain what the nature of the controversy is (something we are all well-practiced in doing already, to comply with the NPOV policy in writing articles.
I don't think this is a good idea. If I cite a British National Party website as support for a statement about BNP official policy, I'm quoting a source that has generated controversy, but this does not in any way affect the fact that my citation is the most reliable way of citing BNP official policy. If there is some controversy over a citation it should not be included in a NPOV article. A form of citation must be found that is perceived as factual by all (reasonable) parties. --~~~~