[WikiEN-l] Reference questioning and how to cite secondary references

[David Gerard]

Tony Sidaway (minorityreport at bluebottle.com) [050125 03:43]:
> JAY JG said:

> >  The fact  that only a tiny number of
> > seconday sources seem to even be candidates for  this kind of treatment
> > is interesting.

> *All* secondary sources must be handled with caution.


Yes. Particularly in the increased push for more and better referencing. I
see nothing wrong with listing a secondary source, but there must be some
accepted format for listing a secondary source with the primary source it
points to.

Even though it's susceptible to abuse by the querulous, I think it's
important that the following continue to be the case:

1. any assertion in an article can be questioned with a request for a
   reference;
2. the quality of a reference can be questioned.

This should *expecially* be the case in controversial areas.

(I try to cover my arse preemptively, e.g. in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System#X.Org_and_XFree86 - that
second paragraph summarises history of recent bitter memory. You bet I'm
going to reference it sentence by sentence to the point where the described
sequence of event couldn't reasonably be disputed.)


Something about this needs to go on [[Wikipedia:Cite sources]], though we
should probably thrash it out here for a while first ;-)


- d.