[WikiEN-l] good example of overuse of {{fact}}

[phoebe ayers]

On 10/19/06, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/17/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > It's also a waste of time to state obvious facts in an encyclopedia
> article.
>
> Obvious depends on prior knowledge; this is why obvious facts end up
> in an encyclopedia, because for someone out there, they're not
> obvious.


Indeed. Jefferson was the third president, sure, but I would have a tough
time naming, say, the first three Australian prime ministers. Qualitatively
there's no difference between these questions. By extension, I wouldn't know
the difference if someone vandalized these articles in a non-obvious way;
this is why good sources for obvious facts are useful. We write for English
speakers and learners around the world, at all possible levels of knowledge.


I figure for everything I write about, there's someone out there who might
want to know more, and if I can't provide outside sources I've no business
writing about it. I know this argument has gone round and round in circles
for years regarding undocumented facts of life in various cultures, but I am
talking about the other 95% of information in the encyclopedia. Let's not
forget that an encyclopedia is by definition a tertiary source, something
that makes connections to an outside world of knowledge. I wish there was a
culture of making notes about sources, no matter how bad those sources are,
on the talk pages of articles as information was added -- better to know
that someone was adding information they gained through personal knowledge,
or because it is "common sense," or because they copied from another
article, than to not have any information at all about where a particular
statement comes from.

-- phoebe / brassratgirl