[WikiEN-l] Deterioration: losing references

[Daniel P. B. Smith]

> Date: Sun, 9 Apr 2006 23:10:24 -0400
>
> Huh? I thought that we had pretty much accepted that the general  
> trend for
> high-profile, highly edited articles is that as time passes they  
> tend to
> become higher quality. The often incredible improvement for front page
> featured articles is proof enough of this. Do you have a particular  
> example
> in mind of this deterioration effect?

I'm afraid I don't, not at hand, but one phenomenon I've noticed and  
am going to make a point of documenting the next time it occurs is  
that there is a significant tendency for references to be lost over  
time. I notice it because I try to be fairly punctilious about  
providing them, and in several cases when reviewing articles I put  
significant work into, say, a year ago, I find that treferences have  
been lost.

Given the inability to perform a text search through histories, it is  
sometimes fairly laborious to find them again. On the other hand, a  
Google search on anything that's been in Wikipedia for more than  
about six months is apt to turn up, overwhelmingly, WIkipedia and  
mirrors as the first few pages of hits. I believe, but I cannot  
prove, that Web sources quoted in Wikipedia, that _still exist,_  
sometimes fail to show at all in Google searches if they are small  
and insignificant sites and there are hundreds of bigger ones  
(Wikipedia and mirrors).

As I say, I don't have an example to point to, but I'll make a point  
of doing so when I find one.

The edit history usually shows that what seems to be happening is  
very sloppy editing, particular in rewriting or restructuring parts  
of articles. Sometimes people will remove a sentence they think is  
wrong and inadvertently remove an adjacent reference. Sometimes  
people remove an item but not the reference that supports it.  
Sometimes people remove a reference but not the item it supports.  
Sometimes people remove an item and its reference, then later someone  
reinserts the item but fails to reinsert the reference...