Milos Rancic wrote:
On 8/10/07, daniwo59(a)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