[WikiEN-l] I'm disappointed in Wikipedia.

[Andrew Gray]

On 11/06/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:

> >What's not perfectly fine is how lazy people are when it comes to looking
> >for sources. I often see quotations tagged with {{fact}} that have sources
> >readily available on Google
>
> There is nothing that says anyone is compelled to go and look for
> sources if the original author can't be bothered to do it themselves.
> Tagging with {{fact}} or {{unreferenced}} is reasonable, the person
> tagging may be completely unfamiliar with the subject and the authors
> of the article will be in a much better position to provide not just
> any old reference but a good, authoritative one.

I see this "I googled it and there were thousands of results so it's
obviously [laziness/stupididty/evilitude] to tag it as unsourced"
comment a lot. It's an annoying one - as you say, simply googling
doesn't tell you what is and isn't a good source.

There was a discussion earlier about a Turkish academic, where
"obviously" googling his name would give you plenty of sources and so
it was utter folly to delete. Except... well, when you look at it, you
get someone with a website and a moderately high internet profile
because his papers get quoted and discussed. Most hits are in Turkish,
a language we don't reasonably expect enwp editors to read.

And, so, you end up with... well, lots of hits, and you could slap
some in as sources to confirm "yes, he exists, he is an academic, he
writes in these fields". But would they be useful, meaningful
references, or would it have all the practical utility of quoting a
university staff list?

You can tell something doesn't have sources without needing to know
anything about the topic. You can't always tell what is and isn't a
decent source without knowing anything, though...

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk