[WikiEN-l] The dangers of not citing Wikipedia

[Peter Ansell]

----- WJhonson at aol.com wrote:

> From: WJhonson at aol.com
> To: wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Sent: Tuesday, 12 August, 2008 6:41:10 AM GMT +10:00 Brisbane
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The dangers of not citing Wikipedia
>
> Interesting.
>  
> As to the point about secondary citation, it is standard practice in 
> classes 
> that teach about research and writing to cover how to do secondary 
> citation. 
>  For example look at
> _http://writing2.richmond.edu/writing/wweb/apadocu.html_ 
> (http://writing2.richmond.edu/writing/wweb/apadocu.html) 
>  
> The way we should approach citing a reference *through* someone else's
>  
> citation is
> "so and so as cited in such and such"
>  
> It's really a matter of courtesy that we cite *in some way* the actual
>  
> source which we actually consulted.  Of course that isn't the issue 
> here.  It 
> would appear, reading-between-the-lines, that exact quotes or 
> paraphrases were 
> lifted from the Wikipedia article without either en-quoting, or 
> acknowledging 
> the source whatsoever.  Or perhaps merely acknowledging it by  way of
> a simple 
> bibliography, which really isn't sufficient if you are  quoting.
>  
> Will Johnson
> 

Good point. I do the "as cited by" thing for published papers, but for wikipedia with its mix of anonymous, and pseudonymous users, and its continual evolution, it just doesn't look right to say "as cited by Wikipedia user 204.23.144.2 at 13:00 UTC on August 12, 2008" (if you even feel like taking the time to figure out which user it was that actually put the citation in given how many revisions are on many articles).

Cheers,

Peter