[WikiEN-l] Citationgate: expertise and verifiability

[David Gerard]

On 29/09/06, Mak <makwik at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.


This needs posting to WT:FAC. They get attacks of weird fashion in
citation format that spread out through the wiki.

I mean, I see their point: verifiability. Ideally, there should be a
secondary source that already says "was widely considered". But it can
get stupid, yes.


- d.