[WikiEN-l] Re: Plagiarism Policy, was A Missing Policy

Tue Jul 19 17:05:03 UTC 2005

Haukur Þorgeirsson wrote:

>>Clearly you should list each of the 4-5 online obituaries as sources.
>>    
>>
>I'd like to take this opportunity to disagree
>slightly with what I see as a fundamentalist view,
>namely that an article should always list as
>references exactly the sources that the editor
>had in front of herself while contributing to it.
>
It is the proper thing to do to cite these as references.

>I think that it's often more helpful for the reader
>to list other works. For example I often use my
>Icelandic books to find information, for example
>about bird species. But it's just not very useful for
>the typical reader of English Wikipedia to see those
>sources. Who is going to check them or use them?
>
The choice of what to mention as a reference should not presume what the 
reader will or will not understand or what may or may not be easily 
avaiable to him.  That is the beginning of dumbing down.  If you used an 
Icelandic book that's fine; say so.  Making things checkable does not 
imply easily chackable.  Additional English references can also be 
mentioned.

>Don't get me wrong, I often put Icelandic sources
>under the References heading - but I prefer to do
>it only for subjects where there aren't any English
>books with the same information. For subjects like
>bird species where there are plenty of good works
>in English (which I don't have) citing Icelandic
>sources is jarring and not appropriate (except,
>perhaps, for something like [[Fauna of Iceland]]).
>
If the English works have the "same" information, you must have used 
them to know that. :-)

>As for a bio-article boiled out of 4-5 online
>obituaries I don't think listing those as references
>will be terribly useful. Typically half of them
>will be inaccessible after a couple of months.
>It doesn't hurt to mention them, though, perhaps
>on the talk page if you feel they won't be useful
>to the reader on the article page.
>
Having things unavailable after a couple of months is typical of life on 
the internet.  That's why it's good to add hard copy references.

>And the separation into References and Further reading
>is also somewhat artificial and not always appropriate.
>If these sections on [[Bobby Fischer]] (currently on FAC)
>are to be believed we're using a couple of online articles
>and a book called "Secrets Of Modern Chess Strategy" as
>References - whereas Fischer's actual biographies are
>listed as Further reading.
>
I agree that there is not much point to having the two separate 
sections.  The semantic difference between "references" and "further 
reading" is not that great.

>If the role of an encyclopedia is to be the starting
>point for further research. We should endeavour to list
>the *best works* in the bibliographies, not just whatever
>we happened to have in front of us while writing.
>  
>
"Best works" is a matter of judgement. If you don't have access to them, 
how can you even judge if they are the best?  If yoi write a whole new 
article what you have in front of you is the best reference you can provide.

Ec