Eugene van der Pijll wrote:
doc schreef:
Courtesy of Messed rocker, we now have a list of biographies of living people that are marked as lacking citations. There are over 8,300 of them - and that's just the ones marked as unreferenced.
To those that say the system roughly works, and we shouldn't contemplate changing our inclusionism, I say, fix this. No more saying 'it can be done', if it can, do it.
I guess the list shows that {{unreferenced}} is overused. Most of the articles on the list are not in the least problematic.
That may be true, in the sense that not every unreferenced article raises major ethical concerns. Though it's undeniable that we have seriously flawed articles, and if that includes so much as one out of a hundred of these, it's far too many. Maybe we should delete most of our overused templates and encourage people to actually work on articles instead of playing with tags.
--Michael Snow
On 4/21/07, Michael Snow wikipedia@att.net wrote:
That may be true, in the sense that not every unreferenced article raises major ethical concerns. Though it's undeniable that we have seriously flawed articles, and if that includes so much as one out of a hundred of these, it's far too many. Maybe we should delete most of our overused templates and encourage people to actually work on articles instead of playing with tags.
Now that'd be the trick, wouldn't it? Although categorizing articles by quality metrics is certainly useful, my gut feeling after looking at a selection of these tagged articles is that the referencing isn't really much worse, if at all, than a random pick of untagged articles.
Part of this is that exactly what {{unreferenced}} means isn't really all that much. All it means is that some editor at some point decided that the article needed more references than it then had. It says nothing about what proportion of the article is not supported by its sources. It says nothing, in most cases, about what exactly the problem is. It says nothing about the kind of statements that are lacking references. And, frankly, it doesn't even mean that the article lacks for references at all - given that tags are often not removed even if the article is fixed, and that the tags generally reflect a single editor's opinion.
It seems as if in many cases the article is so-tagged simply because the reference material is found in a ==External links== rather than ==References== section.
-Matt
On 22/04/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
Part of this is that exactly what {{unreferenced}} means isn't really all that much. All it means is that some editor at some point decided that the article needed more references than it then had.
When I created it, I meant it to say *no references at all* including external links ... and frequently remove it from articles that doesn't apply to. I suggest that be done here. (People putting it on articles because they don't like the reference format is probably not a productive idea.)
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
When I created it, I meant it to say *no references at all* including external links ... and frequently remove it from articles that doesn't apply to. I suggest that be done here. (People putting it on articles because they don't like the reference format is probably not a productive idea.)
Unfortunately it now reads "article or section", so it can be applied to an article when only a portion of the article is missing references. This confuses the issue even further.
It originally said "doesn't adequately cites its references". We need seperate templates. 1. No sources at all. 2. Inadequate sources for either article or section.
(And make those templates clear enough so they're not misapplied)
Mgm
On 4/22/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
When I created it, I meant it to say *no references at all* including external links ... and frequently remove it from articles that doesn't apply to. I suggest that be done here. (People putting it on articles because they don't like the reference format is probably not a productive idea.)
Unfortunately it now reads "article or section", so it can be applied to an article when only a portion of the article is missing references. This confuses the issue even further.
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On 4/22/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Unfortunately it now reads "article or section", so it can be applied to an article when only a portion of the article is missing references. This confuses the issue even further.
I was bold and removed the reference to sections. Turns out we already have a template for tagging sections that lack sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Unreferencedsect
On 4/22/07, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/22/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Unfortunately it now reads "article or section", so it can be applied to an article when only a portion of the article is missing references. This confuses the issue even further.
I was bold and removed the reference to sections. Turns out we already have a template for tagging sections that lack sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Unreferencedsect
-- Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com
I added a link to this template to inform those who do not now about its existence so it gets used more.
Mgm
Really, instead of complaining about it, wouldn't it be better to >fix< it? I mean, seriously.
On 4/22/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/22/07, Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/22/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Unfortunately it now reads "article or section", so it can be applied
to
an article when only a portion of the article is missing references. This confuses the issue even further.
I was bold and removed the reference to sections. Turns out we already have a template for tagging sections that lack sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Unreferencedsect
-- Stephen Bain stephen.bain@gmail.com
I added a link to this template to inform those who do not now about its existence so it gets used more.
Mgm _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 4/22/07, Pilotguy pilotguy.wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
Really, instead of complaining about it, wouldn't it be better to >fix< it? I mean, seriously.
Of course - that's one of my issues with Wikipedia's tagging culture - that people will spend lots of time doing things like tagging but not even attempt to fix the problems they're identifying.
On the other hand, some topics can't be easily sourced without a specialist library.
-Matt
On 22/04/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/22/07, Pilotguy pilotguy.wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
Really, instead of complaining about it, wouldn't it be better to >fix< it? I mean, seriously.
Of course - that's one of my issues with Wikipedia's tagging culture - that people will spend lots of time doing things like tagging but not even attempt to fix the problems they're identifying.
Of course, it's much quicker to tag something than to check it. I was working on an article earlier that I added references for the bits I could find and added a {{fact}} tag to one bit I couldn't verify, although it seems right - the hope is that someone else comes across it who can check it.
Of course, it's much quicker to tag something than to check it. I was working on an article earlier that I added references for the bits I could find and added a {{fact}} tag to one bit I couldn't verify, although it seems right - the hope is that someone else comes across it who can check it.
If you looked for a reference and couldn't find one, I think it would have been better to remove the statement, rather than just tag it.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Of course, it's much quicker to tag something than to check it. I was working on an article earlier that I added references for the bits I could find and added a {{fact}} tag to one bit I couldn't verify, although it seems right - the hope is that someone else comes across it who can check it.
If you looked for a reference and couldn't find one, I think it would have been better to remove the statement, rather than just tag it.
The "although it seems right" part is the important bit. I think it's appropriate to leave in unsourced stuff that isn't controversial and one is either reasonably sure is correct or at least one realizes that they don't know enough in that subject area to have the faintest idea whether it's correct. This is a collaborative work-in-progress, it's not necessary for any one editor to do all the work on an article or to leave an article in "perfect" condition at any given time.
Thomas Dalton wrote:
Of course, it's much quicker to tag something than to check it. I was working on an article earlier that I added references for the bits I could find and added a {{fact}} tag to one bit I couldn't verify, although it seems right - the hope is that someone else comes across it who can check it.
If you looked for a reference and couldn't find one, I think it would have been better to remove the statement, rather than just tag it.
What he did seems right. He was able to make a judgement based on the trends in the rest of the article. I'm assuming that the unsourced statement was not particularly negative, so why not give others a chance to look.
Ec
On 4/22/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/22/07, Pilotguy pilotguy.wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
Really, instead of complaining about it, wouldn't it be better to >fix<
it?
I mean, seriously.
Of course - that's one of my issues with Wikipedia's tagging culture - that people will spend lots of time doing things like tagging but not even attempt to fix the problems they're identifying.
On the other hand, some topics can't be easily sourced without a specialist library.
-Matt
Matt addresses a good point. People prefer tagging because it's easy and fast. We need ways to encourage people to do the grunt work and reward them for doing so. It's a tall order, but changing the wikipedia culture would solve a lot of problems.
Any ideas on how to get that done?
Mgm
On 4/22/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/22/07, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/22/07, Pilotguy pilotguy.wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
Really, instead of complaining about it, wouldn't it be better to
fix< it?
I mean, seriously.
Of course - that's one of my issues with Wikipedia's tagging culture - that people will spend lots of time doing things like tagging but not even attempt to fix the problems they're identifying.
On the other hand, some topics can't be easily sourced without a specialist library.
-Matt
Matt addresses a good point. People prefer tagging because it's easy and fast. We need ways to encourage people to do the grunt work and reward them for doing so. It's a tall order, but changing the wikipedia culture would solve a lot of problems.
Any ideas on how to get that done?
Mgm
Always acknoweldge the editors who do grunt work in your area is a good starting place. I can't believe the number of editors who are content to come to Wikipedia and spend 5-10 hours a week creating lists, correcting grammar and spelling, and the sort of crap that I would never do. In fact, the best thing about Wikipedia, to me, is the half dozen editors who stalk my somewhat unattractive writing style and correct everything I post. I try not to give them a hard time by carefully editing before I post, but they always find something.
But, I always remind the editors who just come by and do a clean-up, and aren't out for FA and GA and Did you know and edit county glory, that in the end, it doesn't matter how good are information is if it's so ugly no one wants to look at it.
I'm adding occupations and nationality to the lists messed up rocker posted and doing quick clean-ups on the articles. I'll do 10 a day.
KP