[WikiEN-l] Citationgate: expertise and verifiability

[Mak]

In addition, in my view, adding specific citations can be misleading for
widely believed/understood/known facts.

For instance, if I write that "Anthony Newcomb says that Alfonso Fontanelli
was one of the foremost madrigalists of 16th century Italy", or in other
words "Alfonso Fontanelli was one of the foremonst madrigalists of 16th
century Italy<ref>Newcomb blah blah</ref>", that implies that other major
scholars of music in 16th century Italy such as Alfred Einstein, do /not/
believe that Fontanelli was a foremost madrigalist, which isn't the case.
It's widely thought that he was. It shouldn't need an inline citation,
because all the major sources agree on it.

But since practically no-one on-wiki is an expert on 16th century Italian
music, they insist on inline citations, so that someone could potentially go
"check" that "fact". I think inline citations can be very important, but I
don't think every single factual assertion in an article should have to have
an inline citation, especially when an article really  is simply echoing
accepted non-controversial scholarship, such as, for instance, [[Dido and
Aeneas]], which just received a GA review request for inline citations. It's
getting ridiculous.

[[User:Makemi]]

On 9/29/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:
>
> "Peter Jacobi" <peter_jacobi at gmx.net>
>
> > In the unlikely case anyone interested has missed it: There
> > are some troubles re mandatory in-line citing and science
> > articles.
> >
> > It all started with a warning put at large number of "good
> > articles" that they will be delisted soon for lack of
> > in-line cites. This immediately got the response, that standard
> > textbooks facts are not and should not be in-line cited, the
> > references section will name selected textbooks and one cannot
> > judge the correctness without having some context anyway.
>
> It is certainly foolish in many cases, and make-work, to reference
> specific and uncontroversial well-known facts. What is more it will tend to
> make articles unreadable, and effectively unwriteable also. This style is
> essentially only fit for very careful writing in doctoral dissertations with
> particularly terrifying examiners in mind.
>
> It seems clear that enWP could get overrun by nutty lawyering types, if a
> firm line is not taken. Is there not a 'statute of limitations' of sorts
> appropriate? When a piece of science is over 50 years old, one expects to
> read about the details of the original papers in a historical article. And
> the chances are that there are so many textbook citations that picking just
> one isn't a great help to students.
>
> Charles
>
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