[WikiEN-l] Citationgate: expertise and verifiability

[David Russell]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Mak wrote:
> 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.

First of all, if 'all the major sources agree on' a particular fact,
then where is the problem in citing one of them? Good Articles need to
demonstrate compliance with the Manual of Style at the very least (if
not all the other various guidelines on different issue) - and if people
had followed [[WP:CITE]] in the first place then there wouldn't be the
problem with the GA review, would there? It's not as if it is a brand
new guideline that may be under dispute or unknown - WP:CITE has been
around since 2002, if some editors decided to ignore it then it's no
surprise that others objected to their work being elevated to GA status.

Cynical
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFHUsgg8fvtQYQevcRAvY9AKCDjr35cKRmp8NeQevbiv1/YxSeiACfTEuo
9hKeAnibb3O5hC7USJ9Gd3w=
=AznJ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----