On 8/10/07, daniwo59(a)aol.com <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.
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".