[Wikipedia-l] Wikicite project pages (english versions only so far)

Tue Feb 1 23:21:04 UTC 2005

I think that at the moment credibility is extremely overrated among
Must Add Sources to All Articles Right Now Fanatics.

While it does certainly help, it seems to me that most people take
everything Wikipedia says as true no matter what, despite what the
MASAARNF say - lack of sources vs. presence of sources would only be a
distinguisher for a limited number of people ("intelligent" people as
the case may be, or people to whom credibility is important, ie
somebody who isn't just wanting to know something and doesn't care a
lot about credibility).

Prolonged existance of a fact in en.wikipedia by itself certifies to a
certain degree the credibility of the fact - anything that is absolute
hogwash will usually be removed right away or within a week, and
anything that is hogwash but less so will usually be removed within a
few weeks. The kind of stuff that gets through for months on end is
usually the type of stuff that is only subtly wrong and for most
people is "right enough".

So while I don't propose not giving cites at all, I do propose a
whupping for all those who add cites to articles I wrote completely,
given that I was either too lazy to add cites and theirs are only
guesses, or I didn't add cites because I didn't use any sources other
than myself (Did the person who wrote the first book use cites? No,
because there /was/ nothing to cite - so people judged the content by
itself and not by the citations).

Cites do not ensure credibility, either. I can add loads and loads of
hogwash to [[Indo-European languages]] citing Edo Nyland, yet the
stuff I say will still be hogwash. That it comes with honest cites
attached is only misleading, given the total unreliability of the
resources cited (No expert, in their right mind, will be able to read
anything Mr Nyland has written without falling to the floor and
laughing themselves near to death - although Mr Nyland appears to be
completely serious and believes what he writes).

If I add to [[Basque language]] that "Basque is, along with [[Ainu
language|Ainu]] and the [[Dravidian languages]], the modern descendant
of the Saharan language, and is the origin of all modern languages
which were created by Benedictine priests." and cite Mr Nyland (who
now in addition to his crackpot website has apparently been published
- you can get his crackpot book for 30 US dollars now), that does not
mean it should not be deleted just because it gives a citation, and it
does not mean it should be trusted, either. (in case you couldn't
tell, Benedictine priests are most definitely not responsible for
"inventing" all modern languages from the vocabulary of some
ur-language called "Saharan")

Mark

On Sun, 30 Jan 2005 14:07:43 -0500, Stirling Newberry
<stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wikicite
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicite
> 
> A fact is only as reliable as the ability to source that fact, and the
> ability to weigh carefully that source. Wikipedia's community, in an
> effort to expand its useful sphere of users, increase its reliability,
> usability and credibility has held several related discussions on
> improving the scholarly apparatus of wikipedia. The need to cite
> sources is now in the community standard's list, the desire to upgrade
> the citation of articles is the subject of the Fact and Reference
> Project, and the Encyclopediac Standards project has discussed
> automatic, or at least software assisted citations. There has also been
> a coding effort to support footnoting.
> [edit]
> 
> Need for Live Data
> 
> These projects, need, not only to be joined together, but to be joined
> together in a live manner, which allows for the creation of
> bibliographic apparatus. The Library of Congress is working on such a
> project for its purposes, it is the purpose of this project to create
> an open wiki system which will allow:
> 
> 1.  Software assisted citation. To make it easier for editors to cite,
> and to make citations comprehensive to include a link to an author
> article, the book's card and the date as a wikilink.
> 
> 2.  Card catalogs which will allow users to annotate the work, and to
> link to other works, which could include later editions, bibliography
> and textual apparatus. To make the card catalog live data, rather than
> dead data.
> 
> 3.  Support a footnote system in wikimedia. To improve the ability to
> assess credibility and standards compliance of articles and their
> information.
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