Haukur Þorgeirsson wrote:
I'd rather not spend much more time discussing this. Our differences in opinion are somewhat academic anyhow. In practice we all agree that Wikipedia's articles need more and better references.
Absolutely.
But I personally think that trying to make every fact "checkable" through references at the bottom of the article is a chimera. In practice people don't fact-check articles by getting the books at the bottom and reading them through. People fact-check articles by seeing something that they think is wrong and then looking up the correct fact in a work of their choosing. That's our actual model of arriving at the truth and it works well most of the time.
If people aren't checking these sources, or alternate sources, at all that means that I could invent a totally fictitios reference and have it accepted. That's scary.
A fact on a bird species I supply through an Icelandic ornithology book is only very marginally "more checkable" to 99.9% of Wikipedia's editors if I supply the name of the book. You're better off looking the relevant bird up in a book of your choosing.
To make the example more concrete here's the edit I'm thinking off. I was editing out of town (watching birds) a month ago and hadn't logged in:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arctic_Tern&diff=16117224&...
As you can see I *did* supply the source in the edit history though I didn't find it worthy of the article itself. Interestingly no other editor has supplied any source at all.
Who would ever look in the edit history for a reference? I think it would have been an excellent reference to put at the bottom of the article. I have too many other things to occupy my time here without getting distracted by birds, but my inclination for fact-checking was to reach for Godfrey's "Birds of Canada". That would give a different perspective, and I could add that as a further reference. An American could give a view about the bird in Alaska; a Russian or Norwegian could also provide sources in those languages, and we would still have room for references from the Southern Hemisphere.
The choice of what to mention as a reference should not presume what the reader will or will not understand or what may or may not be easily avaiable to him. That is the beginning of dumbing down. If you used an Icelandic book that's fine; say so. Making things checkable does not imply easily chackable.
I thing that the idea to make everything on Wikipedia "checkable" through references is a chimera. To begin with - when was the last time you fact-checked an article through the references at i
In en:wiktionary where I spend most of my time, I frequently check online references, or look for other listings of the word before I start arguing with the contributor that it appears to come from his imagination. Unfortunately many of these entries are from IPs that we may never see again. Making something checkable, even through a rare reference, is the responsibility of the contributor. Actually checking it is the responsibility of the reader. If the reader does not fulfill his responsibility it's not your fault.