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

[George Herbert]

On 1/25/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > If Susan can make the edit from memory, we're good.
>
> No, we're not good. That's the whole point. People's memories were
> reliable enough when Wikipedia first started and nobody actually used
> it for anything. That's no longer the case. If we want to be a
> credible encyclopedia, we need our facts to come from reliable sources
> (citing them isn't the important part, that's just a way to prove the
> important bit - that the fact came from a reliable source).
>
> There seems to be a serious misunderstanding of what "source" means. A
> source isn't somewhere people can go to verify the fact, it is where
> the fact came from. Citing sources is easy, because you will always
> have the source with you when you write the article (if you think you
> don't, then it means the source is your memory, in which case you
> aren't using a reliable source and shouldn't add the fact). The
> problem isn't that people aren't citing reliable sources, the problem
> is that they aren't *using* reliable sources.

If an expert can't write an accurate, if perhaps not precise, survey
artice on any notable topic in their field of study pretty much off
the top of their head from memory, they're not an expert.

Citations, fact checking, and minor corrections are EXCELLENT things
to leave for others, or for later review by yourself.

Wikipedia is not the fact-based encyclopedia project you're demanding.
 It can never be, because it's not structured that way in a semantic
or knowledge flow manner.  Attempting to force Wikipedia into that
model will blow up your mind and our project.  Please stop.

If you want to do a fact-based encyclopedia project, that's fine; I've
thought about that as a project.  I think it's possible to create a
knowledge database with cited/referenced facts, and semantic context,
such that one can then derive sets of facts for specific articles and
write an article which is 100% referenced and verifyable by nature,
and allows for easy context access.  Such a project is an interesting
computer knowledge theory project.

I predict that it will not see critical mass of crontributors within
the next decade, however.

Wikipedia is what it is, because of what it is - something that you
don't have to be an academic with a reference library right in front
of you as you type.  That we'd like to nail down all the important
stuff with such references over time doesn't mean that it's possible
to write an encyclopedia from scratch with all that information and
volunteer labor.  It probably isn't, here and now, and trying to force
that project model into the existing Wikipedia model is wrong,
foolish, and destructive to Wikipedia's success model.

Killing our project here and now by turning it into Nupedia makes no
sense.  If their model works, then perhaps we should all go work over
there.  If it doesn't then leave the WP model alone...


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