Mailing List Archive

On 11/30/05, Brian <brian0918@gmail.com> wrote:
> In light of the recent USA Today article:
>
> In the same way that we are currently enforcing proper image tags using
> a bot, could we do the same with unsourced articles? Start out by
> placing {{unsourced}} in all the articles lacking sources, and then, if
> it is not sourced in a week, create something like the {{copvio}}
> page-replacer to hide the unsourced content (the entire article),
> explaining with a detailed message that the article must be thoroughly
> sourced.
>
> In my mind, at least, it doesn't seem like there should be any
> difference between enforcing sources for images and sources for
> articles. If anything we should be enforcing the latter more, since
> articles form the basis of the encyclopedia. I know this won't solve
> everything, but I think it should be a vital part of Wikipedia; since we
> do not know who edits an article, we need to know that it is based on
> information that we can verify ourselves.

It's an interesting idea, but it would apply to so many articles on
such a coarse grained way it may wind up being ignored. Perhaps such a
function could be tied to the TOC, so that each section would have a
flag of whether it had been sourced to satisfaction.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

>
> brian0918
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Brian wrote:

> In the same way that we are currently enforcing proper image tags using
> a bot, could we do the same with unsourced articles? Start out by
> placing {{unsourced}} in all the articles lacking sources, and then, if
> it is not sourced in a week, create something like the {{copvio}}
> page-replacer to hide the unsourced content (the entire article),
> explaining with a detailed message that the article must be thoroughly
> sourced.


I don't know about enforcing it ... but, on en: at least, the
{{unreferenced}} tag (which {{unsourced}} redirects to) is there for
anyone who wants to use them. I put it on articles I happen across that
are (a) not a stub (b) don't have even an external link somewhere.


> In my mind, at least, it doesn't seem like there should be any
> difference between enforcing sources for images and sources for
> articles. If anything we should be enforcing the latter more, since
> articles form the basis of the encyclopedia. I know this won't solve
> everything, but I think it should be a vital part of Wikipedia; since we
> do not know who edits an article, we need to know that it is based on
> information that we can verify ourselves.


It's hard to *enforce*. It's already good practice per
[[:en:Wikipedia:Verifiability]].


- d.

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David Gerard wrote:

>Brian wrote:
>
>
>
>>In the same way that we are currently enforcing proper image tags using
>>a bot, could we do the same with unsourced articles? Start out by
>>placing {{unsourced}} in all the articles lacking sources, and then, if
>>it is not sourced in a week, create something like the {{copvio}}
>>page-replacer to hide the unsourced content (the entire article),
>>explaining with a detailed message that the article must be thoroughly
>>sourced.
>>
>>
>
>
>I don't know about enforcing it ... but, on en: at least, the
>{{unreferenced}} tag (which {{unsourced}} redirects to) is there for
>anyone who wants to use them. I put it on articles I happen across that
>are (a) not a stub (b) don't have even an external link somewhere.
>
>
>
>
I agree about that, but I think the templates currently aren't taken too
seriously. People will be motivated to cite/reference with this proposed
system, or something like it. And it seems like something that we should
automatically be requiring. Peer-reviewed encyclopedias do not require
this, because they have trusted, known contributors. Our contributors
are not known in anything like the same sense, so we have to show the
public that our content is based on verifiable information.

>>In my mind, at least, it doesn't seem like there should be any
>>difference between enforcing sources for images and sources for
>>articles. If anything we should be enforcing the latter more, since
>>articles form the basis of the encyclopedia. I know this won't solve
>>everything, but I think it should be a vital part of Wikipedia; since we
>>do not know who edits an article, we need to know that it is based on
>>information that we can verify ourselves.
>>
>>
>
>
>It's hard to *enforce*. It's already good practice per
>[[:en:Wikipedia:Verifiability]].
>
>
>
I don't think it would be too hard to enforce. To start, a bot can look
for any external links in the article, or for use of one of the common
reference templates. Either that, or search for a section called
"References", "Sources" or "External links". To enforce image tagging,
we have appropriate image templates which are flagged/ignored by a bot.
We need only do the same thing with article templates.
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Brian wrote:

> I don't think it would be too hard to enforce. To start, a bot can look
> for any external links in the article, or for use of one of the common
> reference templates. Either that, or search for a section called
> "References", "Sources" or "External links". To enforce image tagging,
> we have appropriate image templates which are flagged/ignored by a bot.
> We need only do the same thing with article templates.


OK, a semi-automatic bot-assisted {{unreferenced}}-tagging. That'll find
them. We can then run "find the sources" drives. Sound workable?


- d.


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David Gerard wrote:

>Brian wrote:
>
>
>
>>I don't think it would be too hard to enforce. To start, a bot can look
>>for any external links in the article, or for use of one of the common
>>reference templates. Either that, or search for a section called
>>"References", "Sources" or "External links". To enforce image tagging,
>>we have appropriate image templates which are flagged/ignored by a bot.
>>We need only do the same thing with article templates.
>>
>>
>
>
>OK, a semi-automatic bot-assisted {{unreferenced}}-tagging. That'll find
>them. We can then run "find the sources" drives. Sound workable?
>
>
I like the idea very much. It will encourage people to not only provide
citations for unsourced articles, but make it a general part of everyday
activity.
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Andrew Lih wrote:

>On 11/30/05, Brian <brian0918@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>In light of the recent USA Today article:
>>
>>In the same way that we are currently enforcing proper image tags using
>>a bot, could we do the same with unsourced articles? Start out by
>>placing {{unsourced}} in all the articles lacking sources, and then, if
>>it is not sourced in a week, create something like the {{copvio}}
>>page-replacer to hide the unsourced content (the entire article),
>>explaining with a detailed message that the article must be thoroughly
>>sourced.
>>
>>In my mind, at least, it doesn't seem like there should be any
>>difference between enforcing sources for images and sources for
>>articles. If anything we should be enforcing the latter more, since
>>articles form the basis of the encyclopedia. I know this won't solve
>>everything, but I think it should be a vital part of Wikipedia; since we
>>do not know who edits an article, we need to know that it is based on
>>information that we can verify ourselves.
>>
>>
>
>It's an interesting idea, but it would apply to so many articles on
>such a coarse grained way it may wind up being ignored. Perhaps such a
>function could be tied to the TOC, so that each section would have a
>flag of whether it had been sourced to satisfaction.
>
>-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
>
And who is going to have time to check all the sources. Also most of the
material that I write comes from books as I hate the external link
festivity some articles become. So who is going to check the books I
use. Hint you can find my library I have at my disposal in Thailand
here: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebruiker:Waerth/Mijn_bronnen (it is
in Dutch but you get my drift).

Also I think it is wrong to play panick over one criticism. Yes things
need to be done. We knew that for years already. To now start panicking
and coming with emergency reactions we might not help the situation.

Walter / Waerth
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Walter van Kalken wrote:

>
>>
>> It's an interesting idea, but it would apply to so many articles on
>> such a coarse grained way it may wind up being ignored. Perhaps such a
>> function could be tied to the TOC, so that each section would have a
>> flag of whether it had been sourced to satisfaction.
>>
>> -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
>>
> And who is going to have time to check all the sources. Also most of
> the material that I write comes from books as I hate the external link
> festivity some articles become. So who is going to check the books I
> use. Hint you can find my library I have at my disposal in Thailand
> here: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebruiker:Waerth/Mijn_bronnen (it
> is in Dutch but you get my drift).
>
Creating a "References" section or using a template to make a proper
book citation will be just as detectable as using an external link. We
are currently only talking about citing sources, not about verifying
them. Articles need to be referenced before their contents can be verified.

> Also I think it is wrong to play panick over one criticism. Yes things
> need to be done. We knew that for years already. To now start
> panicking and coming with emergency reactions we might not help the
> situation.
>
This isn't panicking. This is doing what we should have been doing all
along, and treating our article content with the same importance that we
treat our image content. This is a step in the right direction.
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>>>
>> And who is going to have time to check all the sources. Also most of
>> the material that I write comes from books as I hate the external
>> link festivity some articles become. So who is going to check the
>> books I use. Hint you can find my library I have at my disposal in
>> Thailand here:
>> http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebruiker:Waerth/Mijn_bronnen (it is in
>> Dutch but you get my drift).
>>
> Creating a "References" section or using a template to make a proper
> book citation will be just as detectable as using an external link. We
> are currently only talking about citing sources, not about verifying
> them. Articles need to be referenced before their contents can be
> verified.

Yes I agree with the referencing point. But in some articles on en: all
sentences receive external links. Which is overdoing it imho. An article
should have general references in the reference section. Like Books
x,y,z, etc, websites a,b,c, etc. But not a reference for every sentence.
That is overdoing it.

>> Also I think it is wrong to play panick over one criticism. Yes
>> things need to be done. We knew that for years already. To now start
>> panicking and coming with emergency reactions we might not help the
>> situation.
>>
> This isn't panicking. This is doing what we should have been doing all
> along, and treating our article content with the same importance that
> we treat our image content. This is a step in the right direction.

It is panicking if I watch the deletion list on en: On which a perfectly
legit article by a highly regarded nl: contributor was put up dor
deletion by someone who doesn't know anything about the subject but
Quotes CITE and some other policies. The user wasn't even explained on
his own page why it was put up for deletion.

(URL:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/North_Slavic_languages
)

The real answer to this whole mess is (again imho) . Start becoming more
aggressive on sources when articles are editted by anons. It was an anon
that wrote the article that wasn't checked by anyone and made USA today.
But what is happening now is that users with a good trackrecord are
harassed more (this is happening on nl.wikipedia) while changes by anons
are given the benefit off the doubt because we do not want to scare the
anons (this is happening on nl.wikipedia). Sounds like something gone
awry there. I personally still assume good faith with people who
bothered to register. As 95% in my experience are serious and do not put
garbage on there. The problems are mostly coming from anons. Or Vandals
that seem to do it out of profession. Both of these groups should be
scrutinised more. And not the regular contributors who will normally
handle in good faith.

Waerth/Walter
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The Soi case.

On the Dutch wikipedia I wrote the article [[soi]]. It was also written
on the english wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soi)

According to the CITE principal this article should be deleted right now
as it is not from a book nor a website, but partly from my own and any
Thais experience. Even though it contains pure facts which are the truth
it doesn't cite anything as no sources are used. Note I didn't write the
english article but it basicaly says the same as the Dutch article.

Facts:
/*1) Soi*/ (Thai <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_alphabet>: *???*) is
the term used in Thailand <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thailand> for a
side-street branching off a major street (/thanon
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thanon&action=edit>/). An
alley is called a /Trok
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Trok&action=edit>/.

All true but do not have it from any book.

2) Sois are usually numbered, and are referred to by the name of the
major street and the number, as in "Sukhumvit Soi 4",

Also please come and have a look but not from any book

3) All the even-numbered sois are on one side of the street, the
odd-numbered ones on the other.

How do you want me to prove that from citations without flying you over
here?

4) If for instance a soi is added between soi 7 and soi 9 it will get
the name soi 7/1, the next one soi 7/2 etc.

Again fact new soi was added between 2 sois near my home got the 6/1
number as it was between sois 6 and 8. No sources sorry

5) Almost all sois also have a name.

I first wanted to be bolder as I have never seen a soi that doesn't also
have a name. But I decided to be a bit less sure about it

6) On lower Sukhumvit road in Bangkok for instance the soi's are named
after important landowners or families of landowners who had land in the
area in the past.

Verified with Thais whose families actually come from these landowners
and have been living in the area for a long time. Again no books.

7) Some sois become major thoroughfares and because of that get known by
their name only. Examples are Thonglor (Sukhumvit soi 55), Asoke
(Sukhumvit soi 21) etc.

Again plain fact. Books anyone?

So according to the CITE offensive this article and many like this
should be deleted even though there is nothing that is not the truth in
there. Is it original research? I do not think so. You see the problem
is when you start this CITE offensive one day one of our "police"
officers will find this article and put it up for deletion because there
are no sources. People take these so called guidelines much to strict
and cause damage with it.

This is why I would say be stricter on anons and newbies and maybe make
some kind of ranking of wikipedians that are known to work in good faith
or that are known IRL. Like me, anyone can always call me (see my
phonenumbers) I even put my homeaddress up once. I might not always be
able to quote directly where I got something from. But I am handling in
good faith.

And with me there are many people like me.

Waerth/Walter
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The problem is that the bulk of our content has no explicit source.
It may be correct and unchallenged, but no source is listed.
Additionally, a slightly more sophisticated level of vandalism would
simply list a spurious source. Beyond that lies referencing a source
which is known to be in error.

Fred

On Nov 29, 2005, at 10:58 PM, Brian wrote:

> In light of the recent USA Today article:
>
> In the same way that we are currently enforcing proper image tags
> using a bot, could we do the same with unsourced articles? Start
> out by placing {{unsourced}} in all the articles lacking sources,
> and then, if it is not sourced in a week, create something like the
> {{copvio}} page-replacer to hide the unsourced content (the entire
> article), explaining with a detailed message that the article must
> be thoroughly sourced.
>
> In my mind, at least, it doesn't seem like there should be any
> difference between enforcing sources for images and sources for
> articles. If anything we should be enforcing the latter more, since
> articles form the basis of the encyclopedia. I know this won't
> solve everything, but I think it should be a vital part of
> Wikipedia; since we do not know who edits an article, we need to
> know that it is based on information that we can verify ourselves.
>
> brian0918
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

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On 11/30/05 12:19 AM, "Andrew Lih" <andrew.lih@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 11/30/05, Brian <brian0918@gmail.com> wrote:
>> In light of the recent USA Today article:
>>
>> In the same way that we are currently enforcing proper image tags using
>> a bot, could we do the same with unsourced articles? Start out by
>> placing {{unsourced}} in all the articles lacking sources, and then, if
>> it is not sourced in a week, create something like the {{copvio}}
>> page-replacer to hide the unsourced content (the entire article),
>> explaining with a detailed message that the article must be thoroughly
>> sourced.
>>
>> In my mind, at least, it doesn't seem like there should be any
>> difference between enforcing sources for images and sources for
>> articles. If anything we should be enforcing the latter more, since
>> articles form the basis of the encyclopedia. I know this won't solve
>> everything, but I think it should be a vital part of Wikipedia; since we
>> do not know who edits an article, we need to know that it is based on
>> information that we can verify ourselves.
>
> It's an interesting idea, but it would apply to so many articles on
> such a coarse grained way it may wind up being ignored. Perhaps such a
> function could be tied to the TOC, so that each section would have a
> flag of whether it had been sourced to satisfaction.
>
> -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
>

Doubt it would be ignored, you can cite and then be accused of doing
original research, how fun.

I had a cited source for John Dean's article and the minute John Dean cried
about it in his column on Salon.com it was immediately changed anyway. I
think CITE is a start but it needs to be fleshed out more because even
amongst sources you have varying degrees of reliability.

--Guy (User:Wgfinley, still on Wikibreak because of junk like this)


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Fred Bauder wrote:
> The problem is that the bulk of our content has no explicit source. It
> may be correct and unchallenged, but no source is listed. Additionally,
> a slightly more sophisticated level of vandalism would simply list a
> spurious source. Beyond that lies referencing a source which is known
> to be in error.

It's not necessary to source *everything*. Paris is the capital of
France, everyone knows that. We don't need to cite some obscure French
governmental listing which proves this.

What does need to be cited are facts which are not common knowledge
(like statistics) and opinions which must be attributed.

I've now started removing any additions to pages I have on my watchlist
which I do not think are common knowledge and have no source for the
claims, and I have asked contributors to cite where they are getting
this information from.

Chris
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Good move, but take it easy.

Fred

On Nov 30, 2005, at 11:07 AM, Chris Jenkinson wrote:

> I've now started removing any additions to pages I have on my
> watchlist which I do not think are common knowledge and have no
> source for the claims, and I have asked contributors to cite where
> they are getting this information from.
>
> Chris

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Fred Bauder wrote:
> Good move, but take it easy.

Have you ever known me to be anything but a diplomat? ;)

Chris
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Walter van Kalken wrote:

> Yes I agree with the referencing point. But in some articles on en: all
> sentences receive external links. Which is overdoing it imho. An article
> should have general references in the reference section. Like Books
> x,y,z, etc, websites a,b,c, etc. But not a reference for every sentence.
> That is overdoing it.


It depends on the article. Mostly those will be highly contentious
articles where the content of the sentences was in fact questioned. See
the talk page.

(I have occasionally written defensively on matters of controversy
between the participants, referencing each phrase.)


>> This isn't panicking. This is doing what we should have been doing all
>> along, and treating our article content with the same importance that
>> we treat our image content. This is a step in the right direction.

> It is panicking if I watch the deletion list on en: On which a perfectly
> legit article by a highly regarded nl: contributor was put up dor
> deletion by someone who doesn't know anything about the subject but
> Quotes CITE and some other policies.


Another nomination from ignorance, apparently. I'm not surprised there
are now webcomics about the way deletion works on en: in practice.


>
The user wasn't even explained on
> his own page why it was put up for deletion.


I floated this idea on AFD's talk page. Apparently the regulars consider
it too much effort.


- d.



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Brian wrote:

> In light of the recent USA Today article:

What article? Would it not be better if you followed your own rules
about citing something before you go around spreading panic.

> In the same way that we are currently enforcing proper image tags
> using a bot, could we do the same with unsourced articles? Start out
> by placing {{unsourced}} in all the articles lacking sources, and
> then, if it is not sourced in a week, create something like the
> {{copvio}} page-replacer to hide the unsourced content (the entire
> article), explaining with a detailed message that the article must be
> thoroughly sourced.

This is absolutely unrealistic. The image tagging project has been
going on for perhaps a year (?), and it's gradually getting to where we
want it. No reliable editor opposes the idea of having pages properly
referenced, and ever since having referenced pages became the norm there
has been great progress in that area. Now because of one alleged
newspaper article you expect several hundred thousand articles to be
repaired in a week. If not you will on your own initiative have a bot
go through and delete any material that YOU find inappropriate.

Perhaps you should start by showing a little trust in your fellow
editors rather than begin with a series of hostile enforcement actions.

> In my mind, at least, it doesn't seem like there should be any
> difference between enforcing sources for images and sources for
> articles. If anything we should be enforcing the latter more, since
> articles form the basis of the encyclopedia. I know this won't solve
> everything, but I think it should be a vital part of Wikipedia; since
> we do not know who edits an article, we need to know that it is based
> on information that we can verify ourselves.

Although I agree that the text in articles is more important than the
images, which are mostly only there to make things look pretty, I also
think that two years might be a more realistic time frame for cleaning
this up.

Ec

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Brian wrote:

> David Gerard wrote:
>
>> Brian wrote:
>>
>>> In the same way that we are currently enforcing proper image tags using
>>> a bot, could we do the same with unsourced articles? Start out by
>>> placing {{unsourced}} in all the articles lacking sources, and then, if
>>> it is not sourced in a week, create something like the {{copvio}}
>>> page-replacer to hide the unsourced content (the entire article),
>>> explaining with a detailed message that the article must be thoroughly
>>> sourced.
>>
>> I don't know about enforcing it ... but, on en: at least, the
>> {{unreferenced}} tag (which {{unsourced}} redirects to) is there for
>> anyone who wants to use them. I put it on articles I happen across that
>> are (a) not a stub (b) don't have even an external link somewhere.
>
> I agree about that, but I think the templates currently aren't taken
> too seriously. People will be motivated to cite/reference with this
> proposed system, or something like it. And it seems like something
> that we should automatically be requiring. Peer-reviewed encyclopedias
> do not require this, because they have trusted, known contributors.
> Our contributors are not known in anything like the same sense, so we
> have to show the public that our content is based on verifiable
> information.

Templates aren't taken too seriously because there are too many of
them. There is no motivation in your scheme. If your {{unsourced}}
template is only going on the articles most people won't notice it, and
won't notice anything is wrong until they have need to visit the article
only to find the information is gone.

Why shouldn't peer reviewed encyclopedias be put to the same standard.
What makes our long standing contributors any less trusted? Many of us
do not accept this kind of elitism.

Ec

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I think there is a good deal of un-necessary panic going around about
this USA Today thing. Did it really tell us anything new? No.
Misinformation in rarely visited articles has ALWAYS been a problem.

It's also not nearly as amenable to any kind of automated process as
image tagging.

Let's not run around like headless chickens because some journalist
found that conspiracy-theorist things had been put into his Wikipedia
article.

Fact is: Wikipedia's improving. At quite a tremendous rate, in fact.
It's easy to forget (a) the magnitude of the task, and (b) how bad we
were even a year ago.

-Matt
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I insist that this problem is not different from the problem of
Newspapers or Magazines.

Wherever there is mass-diffusion, there is a risk of disinformation.

Matt Brown wrote:
> I think there is a good deal of un-necessary panic going around about
> this USA Today thing. Did it really tell us anything new? No.
> Misinformation in rarely visited articles has ALWAYS been a problem.
>
> It's also not nearly as amenable to any kind of automated process as
> image tagging.
>
> Let's not run around like headless chickens because some journalist
> found that conspiracy-theorist things had been put into his Wikipedia
> article.
>
> Fact is: Wikipedia's improving. At quite a tremendous rate, in fact.
> It's easy to forget (a) the magnitude of the task, and (b) how bad we
> were even a year ago.
>
> -Matt
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Matt Brown wrote:

>I think there is a good deal of un-necessary panic going around about
>this USA Today thing. Did it really tell us anything new? No.
>Misinformation in rarely visited articles has ALWAYS been a problem.
>
>
Yes, but it doesn't mean that we shouldn't do anything about it. We know
about it, now let's fix it.

>It's also not nearly as amenable to any kind of automated process as
>image tagging.
>
>
What is wrong with my suggestion? Just because it doesn't work as well
as image tagging doesn't mean that we shouldn't bother trying it at all.

>Let's not run around like headless chickens because some journalist
>found that conspiracy-theorist things had been put into his Wikipedia
>article.
>
>
That journalist writes for the most read paper in the US. He tells
everyone that Wikipedia is useless. People read that and believe that
Wikipedia is useless. This is a fact that we have to face, not ignore
out of pride.

>Fact is: Wikipedia's improving. At quite a tremendous rate, in fact.
>It's easy to forget (a) the magnitude of the task, and (b) how bad we
>were even a year ago.
>
We can easily get to a point in time when we will be overwhelmed by the
number of editors and new content, and are wishing that we had taken
some sort of measures early on, rather than sit back and boast about
improvements.
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There was a discussion a while back about introducing
new citation markup as part of the Wikicite project.
Yet today there is still no specialized mark-up for
defining citations within an article. At best there
is the footnote feature, which replicates the
typographic conventions of citation in the print world
down to its fundamental limitations, such as its
inability to clearly delimit its own scope (i.e. which
parts of the text make use of a particular citation).
This problem is compounded in a wiki content-creation
environment; an editor can- in complete good faith-
insert new content in the middle of a footnote'd
sentence that hides the fact the new material is
completely uncited.

My proposal back then was to use an enclosing citation
markup, something like:

[[cite:ISBN:000000001X:p215|"cited
text"|"paraphrase"]]

Though this was meant as a stepping-stone to other
projects, in the near-term it can be used to catch
"citation holes" within an article by having the
renderer flag those areas of text that are unsourced.
Not only will this warn readers which sections of an
article are unreliable, it will also direct editors to
those parts of it most in need of their attention.
Here is my mock-up of the idea:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:WikiTextrose_article_citations.png

Outside of a few exceptions, an article should ideally
have a citation for EVERY factual assertion. Walter's
example of the Soi article actually only confirms my
point. There may be no books on the subject, but
there are probably lots of other "texts", such as
maps, guide books, civil engineering manuals, etc.

> 5) Almost all sois also have a name.
>
> I first wanted to be bolder as I have never seen a
> soi that doesn't also
> have a name. But I decided to be a bit less sure
> about it

By encouraging editors to prove every assertion with
evidence, we confront one of the most prevalent, if
lesser, evils on Wikipedia (which I've certainly been
guilty of before)- the resort to "obvious"
off-the-top-of-the-head knowledge which may not quite
be true, is probably remembered less than accurately,
and so must be couched in many qualifiers to hide
these two facts.

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Brian wrote:

> Matt Brown wrote:
>
>> I think there is a good deal of un-necessary panic going around about
>> this USA Today thing. Did it really tell us anything new? No.
>> Misinformation in rarely visited articles has ALWAYS been a problem.
>
> Yes, but it doesn't mean that we shouldn't do anything about it. We
> know about it, now let's fix it.

Fixing it is not the same as burying it.

>> Let's not run around like headless chickens because some journalist
>> found that conspiracy-theorist things had been put into his Wikipedia
>> article.
>
> That journalist writes for the most read paper in the US. He tells
> everyone that Wikipedia is useless. People read that and believe that
> Wikipedia is useless. This is a fact that we have to face, not ignore
> out of pride.

He's not the first one to say that Wikipedia is "useless", and I'm sure
he won't be the last. If the critic makes specific observations enough
will notice to do something about those points. We will never silence
the ones who just make general comments no matter how good we get. As
long as we threaten to undermine their vested interests they will
continue the criticism.

>> Fact is: Wikipedia's improving. At quite a tremendous rate, in fact.
>> It's easy to forget (a) the magnitude of the task, and (b) how bad we
>> were even a year ago.
>
> We can easily get to a point in time when we will be overwhelmed by
> the number of editors and new content, and are wishing that we had
> taken some sort of measures early on, rather than sit back and boast
> about improvements.

So who's sitting back and boasting? Those improvements have happened.
Accepting that does not mean that everybody stops making improvements.
Editors just need to stick to what they're good at instead of worrying
about what they feel others are not doing.

Ec

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On 11/30/05, Walter van Kalken <walter@vankalken.net> wrote:
> The Soi case.
>
> On the Dutch wikipedia I wrote the article [[soi]]. It was also written
> on the english wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soi)
>
> According to the CITE principal this article should be deleted right now

Actually, a quick google search turned up a few relevant citations
(one from Wikitravel, in fact). I added them to the English article.
It is very very hard to find articles which are at once encyclopedic
and verifiable, but have no suitable reference either online or in
print. I cannot think of an example atm.

++SJ
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SJ wrote:
> On 11/30/05, Walter van Kalken <walter@vankalken.net> wrote:
>
>> The Soi case.
>>
>> On the Dutch wikipedia I wrote the article [[soi]]. It was also written
>> on the english wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soi)
>>
>> According to the CITE principal this article should be deleted right now
>>
>
> Actually, a quick google search turned up a few relevant citations
> (one from Wikitravel, in fact). I added them to the English article.
> It is very very hard to find articles which are at once encyclopedic
> and verifiable, but have no suitable reference either online or in
> print. I cannot think of an example atm.
>
> ++SJ
Hoi,
I find it remarkable that this CITE thing may break one of our
fundamental reasons for success. It will drive people away when it is
used as a tool to justify deletions. Why will it drive people away,
because it raises the entry level to a point where many people will just
no longer bother to do something. Yes, there may be an EDIT button, but
without a citation it will be gone.

Having citations is a good thing but please realise that it is best used
when controversies arise. It is then part of the instrumentarium to come
to a NPOV. When it used on its own I expect it to prove disastrous for
the influx of new people into our community. Certainly if this is deemed
to be necessary to be followed by all the projects that do not have the
maturity of the English language wikipedia.

So, when you in the en.wikipedia decide to have this new deletion
policy, consider the fallout it may have elsewhere.

Thanks,
GerardM

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