[WikiEN-l] Nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]

[George Herbert]

On 1/25/07, Robth <robth1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/25/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Jan 25, 2007, at 8:16 AM, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> >
> > > If people cited their sources in the first place, there wouldn't be
> > > any
> > > abuse by people using that fact to get it deleted. Any abuse with
> > > these
> > > policies can be prevented if people just made the effort. I think
> > > I'm going
> > > to reread those pages and think about rewriting them.
> >
> > But this is one of the problems. The burden of citing everything is
> > larger than our editors, especially our casual editors, are willing
> > to undertake. We will never reach a point where people will cite
> > their sources in the first place. Hence the prospect of eternally
> > playing catch-up.
>
> I disagree.  Citing is not as difficult as you seem to think it is; if
> you're in the middle of writing an article based on sources that are
> sitting in front of you, it really isn't that hard to note down where
> the facts came from as you write them down (lately I've become a fan
> of the <ref>Unless otherwise noted, all details regarding [Subtopic X]
> are drawn from [Source Y], pp. A-Z.</ref> style for citing basic facts
> with relative ease).

You're assuming here that most of us sit down with our references in
front of us when we start writing an article.  I mostly don't, though
there are exceptions - I come across a gap or a misstatement in an
article, or a missing article, where I know what the right content is
to answer the question, and I start inserting the right content right
there.  If I can quickly google up a reliable source while doing so
I'll cite it then.  If not, I try and find something in the library at
home, or at work, but I don't worry about it much.

>  It's true that casual editors tend not to cite
> their contributions, but nobody does at first, and I think that the
> reason for this has less to do with unwillingness to do so than with
> the idea simply not occuring to people.  Obviously, any statements
> about this are going to be speculative, but I can say that in my case
> I started out just writing stuff down from memory and then, after
> someone told me to cite sources, moved to doing that.  It will be very
> difficult to get Wikipedia into a condition where passerby editors
> feel that citing one's sources is an integral part of adding
> information to an article, but I don't think that's a reason to give
> up the fight.
>
> I think that what tends to get lost in these discussions is the
> incredibly good effect that citing as you go has on the accuracy of
> writing.  I don't know how many times I've flipped open a book to find
> a quick confirmation of some (seemingly very obvious) fact that I was
> about to add to an article, only to find the opposite in print and
> then, after checking a couple more books, to realize that my memory
> had deceived me.  No matter how well people know their subjects, they
> will make mistakes, and a writing practice that asks you to flip open
> a book and check what you're saying before you write it down is a good
> one.

Here's the problem.  Academic rigor - which I understand, having done
refereed papers for conferences and such - is all fine and good for
scholarly original research papers.

For an encyclopedia, the vast bulk of what we're trying to do is to
simply convey the top level survey of a field to the general public.
Textbooks are cited, but not nearly as well as research papers.
Encyclopedias are generally cited much worse than that, if at all.

It's also in conflict with the idea of a Wiki - that allowing rapid,
open growth will move in a focused random walk towards better and more
accurate articles over time.

I have no problem with people who want to write WP articles as
rigorously as they would an article for Nature or any professional
journal or conference.  But if you do that, you work much more slowly
than people willing to let it hang out a little.

If we look at Wikipedia as the process of getting to really good
articles on all the subjects which are notable in the world, rather
than the finished product, we need to be encouraging people who know
what they're talking about to fill in all the gaps first, and then
polish everything off with citations, extra fact checking, corrections
of minor goofs etc later.


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com