Having references at the end of every article may give the apperance of being more credible.
However, many sources I might quote might have incorrect information, or could be fabricated.
Many people seem to feel more comfortable with print media and seem to think that if it's in print, it must be true, but in reality you shouldn't trust print articles and books anymore than you trust their Internet counterparts.
Mark
On Mon, 3 Jan 2005 23:43:45 -0500 (EST), Shaun MacPherson shaun_macpherson2001@yahoo.ca wrote:
Sorry I forgot to invite you all to use (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Fact_and_Reference_C...) as an area for us to discuss this issue. The Wikitechs will beat you there now ;).
Shaun MacPherson
--- Shaun MacPherson shaun_macpherson2001@yahoo.ca wrote:
Larry Sanger believes that the solution to make Wikipedia more credible are with experts. You can see a good article descriping his criticisms here (
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/03/144207&tid=95&tid=1
) posted on Jan 3, 2004.
I think the easiest way to make Wikipedia more credible is with a Fact and Reference Project, which the community has been developing over a period of more than a few months now: (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Fact_and_Reference_Check
).
The thing holding this project back, and ultimately Wikipedia from sheading the skin of being 'noncredible' is the lack of intelligent foot/end notes. A way to format an article with autonumbering endnotes for crossreferencing is lacking. I am sure with this feature programmed in this project can be on its way to cross referencing all facts on Wikipedia.
You can see some examples offoot/endnote formatting template here. JesseW has put much effort into trying to create a formating guide here ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Footnotes ) and another guide here ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cite_sources ). Examples are here (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Fact_and_Reference_Check/...
).
How credible will Wikipedia be if each fact is crossreferenced with 5, 10, 20 external sources like academic journals, encyclopedias, books? Very.
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