[Foundation-l] Jihad in Defense of Objectivity (Was: Enforcing WP:CITE)

[Ray Saintonge]

Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>Maybe complicated isn't what I'm looking for.  But consider the
>following and whether or not you'd enjoy editing it by hand:
>
>'''Roy [[cite:ISBN:123456789:p. 7|"Roy Orbison's middle name is
>Kelton"|"Kelton"]] Orbison''' ([[cite:ISBN:123456789:p.9|"He was born
>in Foo, Bar on April 23 of 1936"|"[[April 23]], [[1936]]"]] –
>[[cite:ISBN:123456789:p.11|"He died that same year, on the 6th of
>December"|"[[December 6]], [[1988]]"]]),
>[[cite:ISBN:123456789:p.13|"They called him "The Big O""|"nicknamed
>"The Big O""]], was ...
>
Interesting example!  Correct bibliography should not override reality 
checks.  Saying that someone born in 1936 died in "that same year", 
which also happens to be 1988 leads me to the conclusion that 
1936=1988.  :-)   This may not have been Anthony's intention, but if 
what we are trying to say becomes so obscured by citations this is an 
omen of our future problems.

>Maybe I'm misunderstanding how these cites would be used, because that
>was hell; it was even worse than I had thought before going through
>the actual exercise.
>
>I don't think wiki markup is the proper solution for this.  And that
>means significant redesign.  Feel free to prove me wrong here, though,
>and show us a working model which is just as easy to edit as
>Wikipedia.
>
>I think it's a great idea, I just think it's years ahead of its time
>(and that assumes it's designed independently of Wikimedia, cramming
>it through Wikimedia development processes would only hinder it).
>  
>
Perhaps.  When I asked my own question about what the rest of us can do 
I was not interested in a lot of theoretical material about what library 
scientists put into card catalogues.  I was considering the point of 
view of a normal Wikipedian (assuming such an animal exists) who is 
about to write an article and who already has adequate references that 
he is ready, willing and able to use.  His problem is to find a 
practical way to enter the citations in a way that will scale with the 
proposed theoretical framework.

The ultimate database seems more and more like the computer geek's 
response the the unified field theory of physicists.  There are still 
many agnostics among us who would like to see proof of 42's existence.

Ec