[WikiEN-l] Citationgate: expertise and verifiability

[Mak]

I've just attempted to explain why having inline citations can be
misleading. If a fact is widely agreed on, and you ascribe it to a single
source or author, it makes it seem as though that person is the sole
proponent of that idea, when in fact pretty much everyone in the field is in
agreement.

If you look at [[Dido and Aeneas]] you will see that it does cite it's
sources. In the oh-so-cryptically named "References" section. It does not
have inline citations because when I wrote the majority of the article, I
was 1) brand new 2) inline citations had not become all the rage 3) *it
doesn't contain controversial assertions. No one has challenged a single
fact in the article. If you know anything about either the work or Purcell
or English Baroque music, you probably won't challenge any of the article's
assertions because they are *not* controversial.

I'll say it again. [[Dido and Aeneas]] cites its sources in the form of
references. If you want to check anything, all you have to do is look at a
fairly short article in Grove and a fairly short introduction in an edition.
It doesn't give inline citations because it doesn't say anything
controversial, and no one has challenged anything in it.

Makemi

On 9/29/06, David Russell <webmaster at davidarussell.co.uk> wrote:
>
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> 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
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