For those books not mentioned in Google, we would of course do our best to compile a list. Then once the list is made, knowing Google, it would only be a matter of time that the list of old books would be listed on Google, therefore making my testing mechanism work. If we were to compile a list of these books, we'd probably have to protect these pages from editing to prevent misuse/fraud. On 10/3/06, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: wrote: hoax seem legitimate if new rules involving the had all along: Google. book being referenced, wiki mirrors). If it thing we could do is for can note that said print talk page (via some sort of probably never will between 1923 and 1995

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For those books not mentioned in Google, we would of course do our best to compile a list. Then once the list is made, knowing Google, it would only be a matter of time that the list of old books would be listed on Google, therefore making my testing mechanism work. If we were to compile a list of these books, we'd probably have to protect these pages from editing to prevent misuse/fraud.

On 03/10/06, James Hare <messedrocker(a)gmail.com> wrote: It would be simpler just to toss the name into copac.ac.uk or catalog.loc.gov and see if it appears! But this still doesn't tell us anything beyond "I am claiming this book supports me".

It still doesn't get past the fact that I belive David when he says "This band does indeed appear on page seventeen of Australian Indie Rock Monthly, August 1979", but am slightly less inclined to believe the unknown chap claiming he's found something earthshattering in a 1937 issue of a Russian underground newspaper...

Fundamentally, use of an offline (or subscription, etc) source is a good and sensible thing, but it requires a modicum of trust that we're getting a reliable link between the page and the information quoted; we can't get around this by preparing lists of reliable and unreliable texts, we can only get around this by someone "trusted" saying yes, I've looked at that, it's there.

Ray Saintonge wrote: etc) source is a of trust that we're information quoted; reliable and unreliable "trusted" saying yes, independently, but that's getting software that checked for common that, and allow measure of probably Yes, a blind-vote citation-checking system in which aggregate results are captured. Once nice property of such a system is that the votes of good-faith, competent citation-checkers will correlate strongly with one another, while the votes of bad-faith and/or incompetent checkers will have a basically random distribution. This, of course, assumes no widespread collusion among checkers, but in most cases such collusion will be more trouble than its worth. In addition, it would be possible to seed the citations shown to checkers (even on an individual basis) with random false citations which they would be expected to flag as incorrect/fabricated. Access to open bibliographic catalogs would allow for the creation of completely random but quite legitimate-seeming citations, as it is only a matter a randomly picking a work returned by querying on the article's main subjects. I think it might also be useful to use the results of citation-checking as a feed into some sort of trust ecology. Fact-checking is mostly tedious, unrewarding work, and so the users who have shown themselves to be competent and reliable at it are probably going to be trustworthy or at least good-faith in other areas as well. This would of course not be the only input to a user's "trust rating", but probably one of the more significant ones.

Andrew Gray wrote: >On 03/10/06, James Hare <messedrocker(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Absolutely! And that claim is only sometimes a hoax. It can as easily be a good-faith misinterpretation of the information.

It takes a long time to build trust, and there are still many long standing Wikipedians whose judgement I would question on some issues but I would trust on others. I'm sure we all keep personal lists of that source. The newbie who quotes the 1937 Russian newspaper in support of his point could very well be right. It would a gross assumption of bad faith to reject his citation solely on the basis that he is a newbie.

But of course. So you do not believe in having any organized method of fact checking? That people should only fact check disputed articles? I am not sure what your position is after reading the above.

I think at some point an organized method of fact checking needs to happen, although it is debatable if we are at that point yet. My understanding of this method is it would assign fact checkers work "per book" rather than "per article" which is IMHO *much* more efficient.

On 08/10/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb(a)yahoo.com> wrote: to action. false Done. the (admittedly method check position My position is that the proposal originally suggested in this thread - of confirming the existence of books so as to deal with bad-faith fake sources - just won't work, because it means a good deal of work but is trivially easy for the people who we assume are trying to fool us to keep fooling us. We need fact checking. But having a system that sounds like fact checking and looks like fact checking but doesn't work is a net detriment.

On 03/10/06, James Hare <messedrocker(a)gmail.com> wrote: I use lotsa references that aren't in Google and probably never will be (e.g. for indie rock). There's a whole world between 1923 and 1995 in that category.

WikiProjects could prepare lists of reputable printed sources in different fields and eventually (dis)qualify a given source.

In my opinion we need more WikiProjects that are vivacious and full of "experts". All dubious Wikipedia content should be directed towards WikiProjects for verification.

Some of this can be done by checking the ISBN. If it exists, the ISBN should be mentioned. If it is there, it can be checked. We had several cases with fake ISBNs which led to the discovery of fake articles.

given Sound like "L'indice dei libri proibiti", the list of forbidden books that catholic church used for centuries. It became famous for considering unreliable and wicked books from authors like Honoré de Balzac, Cartesio, Daniel Defoe, Denis Diderot, Victor Hugo, Immanuel Kant, Voltaire, Émile Zola (and many others), thus forbidding them. ... Yours seems to me a optimistic dream hard to make true. Plus, will these guys from the wikiprojects be able to be both expert AND npov? Or will they give their opinion in all the matters in wich there isn't just *true* way to solve the problem? Please note that mine are just questions, I'm not polemizing for the sake of it... Tinette

Hi, I've followed closely the thread about verifying content and citing (book) sources. My comment would be that obviously not all (book) sources that have even been proven to exist are credible and reputable. As I am a believer in "Work through WikiProjects" motto I think WikiProjects could prepare lists of reputable printed sources in different fields and eventually (dis)qualify a given source. In my opinion we need more WikiProjects that are vivacious and full of "experts". All dubious Wikipedia content should be directed towards WikiProjects for verification.