[Foundation-l] Re: Sources and sourceability

Thu Dec 8 03:23:46 UTC 2005

On 12/4/05, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I can just provide my personal history here. I appear in the credits of
> several popular reference works as everything from contributor to assistant
> editor-in-chief (a horrible title, I might add, but then again, so was the  book).
> I have worked on these books for Simon and Shuster, Facts on File,  Macmillan
> (before it was gobbled up by Simon and Shuster), Reader's Digest,  Henry Holt,
> and Continuum. In each book, the facts were checked as Brian  describes. In
> fact, I remember one senior editor at Simon and Shuster boasting  about how
> they would pay grad students a certain amount of money for every  mistake they
> found. They were eager to find errors. I now have a manuscript of a  book that I
> wrote for Marshall Cavendish sitting on my desk. Every sentence was  numbered
> and checked. I have been asked to help source the material. I will be  happy
> to provide the email exchange.
>
> Mind you, I am not suggesting that we go to these extremes. I do think it  is
> important, however, that people understand the lengths that publishers  of
> reference works go to in order to ensure the quality of their products. Of
> course, some publishers are more meticulous than others. And despite all the
> efforts, mistakes always managed to slip in anyway.
>
> I am not about to say that because they do it, so should we. On the  other
> hand, I will state my personal belief that with 850,000 articles already  in the
> English Wikipedia, we should pay even more attention to quality than  usual.
>
> Danny

Is the normal process to number every sentence and then check them one
by one?  Who is normally in charge of matching the sentences to the
sources, the author or the fact checker(s)?  Are the sources
documented, and if so in what way?  Do multiple people fact check the
same sentences?

Maybe we shouldn't do this, and even if we should there are probably
more efficient ways to do it using a wiki, and there are other
problems which would make our processes less efficient (it's gotta be
harder to fact check a constantly changing work, especially one with
such a multitude of different authors).  But some more insight into
*how* all of this fact checking is accomplished would be helpful.

Anthony