[WikiEN-l] No references in the "end product?"

[Alphax (Wikipedia email)]

David Gerard wrote:
> On 04/10/06, Ian Woollard <ian.woollard at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> I would strongly argue that we need far, far *less* references than
>> the Encyclopedia Britannica due to the hypertext linking in the
>> wikipedia.
>> What hypertexting means is that the references tend to get pushed down
>> to daughter nodes on particular topics, and you end up with summary
>> articles with few references that internally refer to other articles.
>> In Brittanica I bet that the references are duplicated throughout the
>> Encyclopedia giving an artificially high reference count.
>> We need to get away from encyclopedia envy and do the right things for
>> the wikipedia.
> 
> 
> Hmmmm. Articles get refactored a *lot* around here, though. I've put
> the same reference in several articles as needed on the principle that
> more good references are better than not enough, and we can't presume
> an article will be viewed as part of Wikipedia. I've turned [[Xenu]]
> into a handbill, for instance, and been very glad the references were
> *right there*. Mind you, that article needs to be referenced to the
> hilt for the sheer "wtf" factor, but anyway.
> 
> Semi-tangentially, I'm wondering how to properly reference [[Fork
> (software)]]. It's at about a 2003 or 2004 level of quality -
> "everyone in the field knows this stuff" - but needs more for 2006.
> 

Sadly, I think we may be ahead of the dead-tree world on stuff like this
and references are hard to come by. Online references would probably
reference us in return and we end up being self-referential...

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