[WikiEN-l] Re: Plagiarism Policy, was A Missing Policy

[Michael Turley]

On 7/19/05, Haukur Þorgeirsson <haukurth at hi.is> wrote:
> > Hmmm... or is it just more that it might be embarrassing that the
> > actual article sources are not that authoritative? (indeed perhaps
> > just coming from a website!)
> >
> > Wikipedia's detractors aren't making stuff up out of thin air, often
> > merely drawing on, and exaggerating, the cases where we fail.
> >
> > I would suggest that in many cases where sources are not cited, it's
> > because they aren't good sources. And this happens all the time on
> > less scrutinised Wikipedia articles.
> >
> > Doesn't mean it's not plagiarism though to use someone else's work and
> > not accredit it just because it's awkward for you to do so.
> 
> But plagiarism is the founding principle of Wikipedia! ;)
> Okay, not quite. But if there had been strict requirements
> on using good references in the proper way from the
> beginning I wonder if the project would ever have gotten
> off the ground.
> 
> Maybe it would have, just a bit more slowly, and be all
> the better for it. I honestly don't know.

I am of the opinion that we should always reference sources if we're
not writing directly from our own knowledge.  If you have sources open
in front of you, we should be open about disclosing that fact, and
what sources those are.  It doesn't matter if something is "common
knowledge".  If it's common enough, you wouldn't need any sources open
in front of you.  Inclusion of references includes foreign language
sources, appropriately labeled, as you cannot assume that no user who
understands Icelandic will ever read the articles.

Full references should be listed at the bottom of every article
(ideally, even below the category listings) where they have very
limited ability to distract the reader.

In an environment where anyone can edit at any time, anyone can make
subtle changes to change the meaning of what is posted.  It is
therefore critical that we "show our work" so that if there is a drift
in meaning over the edit history, someone can later follow back and
find the intended meaning somewhere along the line.

Because we don't have professional, paid editorial boards reviewing
the articles before public release, references are our ONLY source of
authority on any issue.  I, for one, don't trust unreferenced or
poorly referenced articles.  No reference, no authority.  Even small
articles benefit from references.  See [[Zetor]] or [[40 mm grenade]]
for examples.  In fact, I won't make any significant content
contribution to Wikipedia anymore without posting references, too.

Time spent in controversial articles such as [[Wal-Mart]] and
[[FairTax]] watching others insert POV and OR time after time has
convinced me that this is the only proper way to contribute content. 
Also, watching VfD, where several unreferenced articles about lesser
known topics received near universal "delete" votes until someone
actually researched the article and posted a reference or two, then
all the votes change to "keep", has show me the correct way to add
data.

Regarding the ever-changing nature of the internet; that is why I
always include a date, such as "retrieved July 19, 2005" on the end of
each of my online citations.  Even if the Internet Wayback Machine
cannot always find the point in history where I got the information,
at least the readers can check to see if the reference material is out
of date or not.

-- 
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused