On 10/08/07, daniwo59(a)aol.com <daniwo59(a)aol.com> wrote:
Sourcing and reliable sourcing seems to be the topic of the day, so it is
worth taking a look at some examples of "sourcing" to see how practical
they
are. In the English Wikipedia, at least, there seems to be a culture of
adding
{{fact}} templates to articles, and while these are often valid, at other
times, the source can be found in the very next sentence. In many
instances, a
source can be found simply by going to Google or Google Books, so that I
wonder
whether the person putting in the {{fact}} tags actually bothered to check
if any information was readily available.
More disconcerting, however, is the idea of sourcing with Wikipedia
articles. This morning I went through the article on [[Italy]]. In the
reference
section, there are six citations of other Wikipedia articles, which is
interesting because the facts there are unsourced too. See footnotes 14-17
and 23, 24
for examples. Note that I am not saying the information is
wrong--simply that
it would be nice to see it validated and confirmed, and if it is
validated,
to see it validated properly.
Danny
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People will add tags often before even trying to verify the stuff themselves
(which is the whole point of Wikipedia), and all it often takes is a quick
Google search to find a relevant website/news article etc. Just as bad as
citing Wikipedia though, is citing mirror sites. Ensure the text you cite
simply isn't a copy of Wikipedia :P Check the date of the website and try to
see which came first, to see if it really is original. And of course, it
must be a reliable source, not someone's personal Geocities site :)
Wikipedia, sadly is not reliable as we'd want it to be.
--
Alex (Majorly)