[WikiEN-l] Citing sources

[Daniel P.B.Smith]

> From: David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
> Rick (giantsrick13 at yahoo.com) [050129 04:02]:
>> I think it's a HORRIBLE idea!!!!!
>> There are far too many articles with no references.
> And *that*'s a horrible idea.
>>  This would be everywhere.
> See, a lack of references is a real problem with Wikipedia's 
> reliability
> and perceived reliability. That means you have nothing to start with on
> seeing if an article has a source or is just off the top of someone's 
> head.
> It might be crap with a reference that doesn't support it, but at least
> then you have a chance to find out.

Traditionally, encyclopedias are _not_ well-referenced. There are 
sometimes what might be called "selected bibliographies," things the 
writer things you might want to read next. But references, in the sense 
of "here's where I got it," no.

Many, but by no means all of the articles in the EB 11th have a set of 
contributor's initials (which you can look up in a table). Odd, since 
it doesn't save that much space; the editors don't really want you to 
focus on the contributor. Which is not that helpful anyway. When it's 
someone like Ernest Rutherford, well, you probably can figure they knew 
what they were talking about. For the rest, their credibility basically 
rests on the jumble of letters after their name and the miniature 
who's-who-like description.

Have I ever heard of "Arthur Dendy, D. Sc., F.R.S., F.Z.S., F.L.S., 
Professor of Zoology in King's College, London, Zoological Secretary of 
the Linnean [sic] Society of London. Author of memoirs on systematic 
zoology, comparative anatomy, embryology, &c?" No. Do I think he knows 
his stuff when it comes to sponges? Well, yeah, sure, sounds like it, 
probably. Most of my profs didn't have that many letters after their 
name. I have no way of knowing whether he was a POV-pusher, though, and 
you'd better believe you can have letters after your name and still be 
a POV-pusher. Big-time.

But Wikipedia is different, because basically it's all written by 
anons, registered or not.

I haven't been following the "bad reference/good reference" stuff but I 
find the whole idea baffling. The purpose of a reference is very 
simple. You're telling people where you got your information. It's not 
a question of good or bad, it's a simple statement of fact. If I got my 
"facts" from The National Enquirer, and I say I got them from the 
National Enquirer and give the date and page number, that's a good 
reference. The only bad reference would be an untruthful reference--if 
I got them from the National Enquirer and said they were from The New 
York Times.

But, either way: if I give the reference, I'm giving people reasonable 
assurance that I didn't just make them up, unless I'm a total liar and 
fraud, and there aren't that many of them contributing to Wikipedia.

And either way, a reference is verifiable. If someone says that The New 
York Times published an article about a 400-pound eight-year-old girl 
who was inseminated by a space alien and gave birth to a two-headed 
unicorn, on page 7, July 16th, 2000, well as it happens I can go online 
courtesy of my local public library and find out in about sixty seconds 
whether there's really such an article. (I'll leave you in suspense as 
to the answer on that one).

If I say "I got it from the National Enquirer, page 1, April 1st, 
2000," well, first of all, a lot of people will be able to say right of 
the bat, "Great, so I won't believe it."

Furthermore, _I can check the context._ Maybe it says "It is said that 
the natives of some remote Canary Islands have an ancient legend that a 
400-pound, etc." The chain of traceability is broken. Vanished into the 
mists of the Canaries.

But maybe it says "Dr. Fargo M. Seneca, chief obstetrician at St. 
Mary's Hospital in Madison, said that a 400-pound etc." Cool! Another 
source citation! I can call up St. Mary's and say I'm writing an 
article for Wikipedia and could I speak to Dr. Seneca.

(By the way: I've had _very_ good luck contacting "press" contacts by 
email or phone, and saying "I'm editing an article in Wikipedia, the 
free online encyclopedia, and I was trying to check thus-and-such 
fact..." I always give Wikipedia's URL. And sometimes I even explain 
that anybody can edit Wikipedia. So far, I've gotten respectful and 
helpful treatment every time).

So, I say, cite your sources. If you got it from a secondary source, 
just say so. The important thing is to _say where you got it_ and 
maintain a chain of traceability.

P. S. True story. In grad school, there were a bunch of us discussing 
whether or not UFOs were real. One guy was very impressed by a book 
written by someone from APRO or NICAP or something, and, in particular, 
by a statement that some pieces of an alien craft had been analyzed and 
were of some substance--I forget what--of a purity that was never seen 
on Earth and couldn't occur on Earth as the oxygen would do 
something-or-other within a few weeks. I think this was someone who 
knew enough chemistry/metallurgy to judge that if the stuff really was 
that pure, it really did need to be extraterrestrial.

So I said, "OK, let's take this as our test case. How do we know he 
wasn't just making it up?" Well, the scientist who did the analysis 
was, I don't know, a Dr. Ortega Perez-Guillermo of the Metallurgy 
Department, University of San Andrés, La Paz, Bolivia, or something 
like that.

Well, this was a big state university we were at and it had a fine 
library. One thing I really, really, really miss about not being in 
grad school is not being within a five minute walk of a fine library. 
So we did a bit of poking around. Guess what? They had several staff 
directories for Universidad de San Andrés, La Paz, Bolivia. It turned 
out that the University de San Andrés hasn't even got a Departamento de 
la metalurgia. And in any case, it didn't have anyone named Dr Ortega 
Perez-Guillermo in any department.

I asked whether we should write to the university, but it was generally 
agreed that it didn't seem as if that story was very credible.

Source citations are heap big medicine.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/