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

[Anthony]

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.
>
> (minor nitpick, agree with the rest of what you wrote)


Looking back at the example, I guess the sort of thing like "Thomas
Jefferson was the third president" does belong in an encyclopedia, and I can
see how such a fact could be considered "obvious".

At the same time, I'd put this in the category of those facts which
absolutely should be contained somewhere in the reference material, but need
not be referenced by an individual footnote.

What's more controversial is "obvious" facts about public perceptions, such
as the example Jimmy was talking about.

"Critics of the GPL often describe it as being
"viral"<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft#Is_copyleft_.22viral.22.3F>,
based on the GPL terms that all derived works must in turn be licensed under
the GPL." (from [[GNU General Public License]])

What should we do with that?  {{fact}} tag it?  Remove it?  Leave it as is?
Personally I'd say it should be removed.  I just removed, without logging
in, the whole paragraph, which was nothing more than speculation regarding
this "perception".  Let's see what happens.

Anthony