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

[John Lee]

On 6/11/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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...


I'm specifically talking about quotations, not garden variety assertions.
It's remarkable how often the first Google result for a few phrases from a
quote is a reliable source for said quote.

Johnleemk