[Foundation-l] Wikipedia ... but where are you going ... (was:Enforcing WP:CITE ...)

[Sabine Cretella]

>Now things have changed; millions
>of people use Wikipedia every month and expect it to be accurate. Requiring references helps us
>attain higher quality.
>  
>
not here ... up to now in a place with 6000 people not one knew 
Wikipedia - I am NOT kidding.

> 
>  
>
>>Come on: let them talk - let's just go ahead working without listening 
>>to them doing our best. The day is not far and they will need to stop 
>>because Wikipedia will show them that liberty and democracy survives any 
>>attack.
>>    
>>
>
>We are already famous
>
??? really??? only in a certain part of the world with certain users - 
the rest of the world does not even know what a wiki is - nor do they 
know what the foundation is.

And I am talking not only about the place where I live (Maiori, Italy) 
... I gave a presentation on Wikipedia during a conference in Cracow and 
had to start at the very beginning - and found many highly instructed 
people asking what that wikipedia was that they find in Google every now 
and then on the first place when searching for contents.

>, so bad press is simply bad (esp right before a fund drive). But beyond
>that, this particular incident showed a place where our review system failed and failed badly. 
>  
>
It is one case ... things have been corrected as soon as the error was 
seen ... well, where's the problem? The best answer to such an article 
would have been: well if you knew that it was wrong, and you know what 
Wikipedia is, why do you make such a huge problem out of this: simply 
correct things - you could have done this - so it is not us who are 
wrong, but the person who "did not correct" knowing how Wikipedia works 
and "officially" believes in equal chances and whatever ... use these 
critics in the right way - that's all.

>If we required references, then somebody from RC patrol would have tagged the the offending
>article as unsourced and subject to eventual deletion. That tells readers to not at all trust what
>is in that article and encourages editors to check the article and add references. I see nothing
>wrong with that. 
>  
>
So now I write about the "Chiesa del Carmine" (Church of the Carmine) 
here in Maiori - where there is no official documentation - all I know 
is from what people of Maiori told me. It was the place where dead 
people after the floods in the 50's were collected ... the first person 
who told me this was my mother in law, then I asked some other old 
people of the town who confirmed - so this can be believed, but there is 
not one ressource that states that it is true. And since this cannot be 
proofed to be true with whatever reference it would be deleted. Well, 
great ... Wikipedia would have been the first place where to publish 
this information - like you request it, it would not be possible - so 
first of all I am required to create a book somewhere else ... but this 
would then make Wikipedia being not the unique reference for such 
information. What about that?

>Like it or not we are being used as a major reference source. Readers rely on us to be accurate.
>Adding references helps us do that. 
>  
>
Well I like it being used, but it is not used enough - people don't know 
Wikipedia. Readers who rely on only one source are not good readers ... 
they are blind readers. And what if the references already contain that 
error? The reference of the reference?

Hmmm ....

Ciao, Sabine

	

	
		
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