On 11/06/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman(a)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(a)dunelm.org.uk
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Yes, English sources are preferred when available, but Turkish ones are
perfectly acceptable for Turkish subjects. Policy doesn't force English
sources where they don't exist -that would be systematic bias.