Milos Rancic wrote:
On 8/10/07, daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
Sourcing and reliable sourcing seems to be the topic of the day, so it is worth taking a look at some examples of "sourcing" to see how practical they are. In the English Wikipedia, at least, there seems to be a culture of adding {{fact}} templates to articles, and while these are often valid, at other times, the source can be found in the very next sentence. In many instances, a source can be found simply by going to Google or Google Books, so that I wonder whether the person putting in the {{fact}} tags actually bothered to check if any information was readily available.
The main point here is that a person who is putting some information inside of article -- should put reference, too. Amount of unverified statements on Wikipedia is enormous (however, I don't say that the situation is better in Britannica, for example) and *there are* contributors who are primary checking unverified statements.
I completely support {{fact}} tagging (instead of {{sources-section}} and similar tags) because {{fact}} tells to other contributors what do they need to find.
However, if someone is working on some article, such person should find sources instead of putting {{fact}} there.
That's preferable, but not always practical. If I'm working on something else and find something debatable on some marginally related other article I prefer to avoid getting off on a tangent that could take up as much time as what I'm really working on. Better to put the fact-tag and retain focus on what I'm really doing. In other cases I don't personally have access to the proper sources. Where the material is in most "standard" texts on the subject it should be enough to refer people to those works in a more general way.
More disconcerting, however, is the idea of sourcing with Wikipedia articles. This morning I went through the article on [[Italy]]. In the reference section, there are six citations of other Wikipedia articles, which is interesting because the facts there are unsourced too. See footnotes 14-17 and 23, 24 for examples. Note that I am not saying the information is wrong--simply that it would be nice to see it validated and confirmed, and if it is validated, to see it validated properly.
This is completely unacceptable and not only for encyclopedia. Referring to own work is possible only as "see *" constructions. I removed all of those "references".
That's a bit hasty.
Ec