--- Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
Having references at the end of every article may give the apperance of being more credible.
However, many sources I might quote might have incorrect information, or could be fabricated.
That is true, this issue was brought up and discussed in our project a while back so I have the benefit of knowing the answer :). Hopefully after the first step of acutally getting the intelligent foot/end notes working (intelligent meaning it autonumbers, autoquotes, autobrings you to the passage when clicked etc) we can go onto the second step of a verification system for the actual references.
One way to prevent people from citing phony facts is to have people being able to verify a fact by signing it. Multiple people would be able to look up a fact, say in a book, and sign to the fact that it exists. You'd then have a system that looks like this:
Fact 1 - Reference from source 1 - Person A says it exists Fact 1 - Reference from source 1 - Person B says it exists Fact 1 - Reference from source 2 - Person A says it exists Fact 1 - Reference from source 2 - Person C says it exists
Obvisally if someone says the reference exists, and someone else says the reference does not that is a large issue, but one easily solved (i.e. a committe will go and look for the book / article / etc. to verify it). Conflicts of references can be arbitrated on by this committe, with fakers being quickly weeded out.
Shaun MacPherson
Many people seem to feel more comfortable with print media and seem to think that if it's in print, it must be true, but in reality you shouldn't trust print articles and books anymore than you trust their Internet counterparts.
Mark
On Mon, 3 Jan 2005 23:43:45 -0500 (EST), Shaun MacPherson shaun_macpherson2001@yahoo.ca wrote:
Sorry I forgot to invite you all to use
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Fact_and_Reference_C...)
as an area for us to discuss this issue. The Wikitechs will beat you there now ;).
Shaun MacPherson
--- Shaun MacPherson
wrote:
Larry Sanger believes that the solution to make Wikipedia more credible are with experts. You
can
see a good article descriping his criticisms here (
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/03/144207&tid=95&tid=1
) posted on Jan 3, 2004.
I think the easiest way to make Wikipedia more credible is with a Fact and Reference Project,
which
the community has been developing over a period
of
more than a few months now: (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Fact_and_Reference_Check
).
The thing holding this project back, and
ultimately
Wikipedia from sheading the skin of being 'noncredible' is the lack of intelligent
foot/end
notes. A way to format an article with autonumbering endnotes for crossreferencing is lacking. I am
sure
with this feature programmed in this project can
be
on its way to cross referencing all facts on
Wikipedia.
You can see some examples offoot/endnote
formatting
template here. JesseW has put much effort into trying to create a formating guide here ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Footnotes
)
and another guide here (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cite_sources
). Examples are here (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Fact_and_Reference_Check/...
).
How credible will Wikipedia be if each fact is crossreferenced with 5, 10, 20 external sources
like
academic journals, encyclopedias, books? Very.
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