[WikiEN-l] References considered virtuous (was New policy proposal)

Mon Dec 13 10:04:42 UTC 2004

Ray Saintonge (saintonge at telus.net) [041213 20:03]:
> Charles Matthews wrote:
> >David Gerard wrote

> >>What we need is to encourage a culture of including references.

> >I'm happy if I can get a good book or two referenced, and an external link
> >or so to corroborate.  I am totally against having to footnote everything.
> >That is a lame way to have to write - training wheels for Ph.D. students.

> A sense of balance is important.  We also can't confine ourselves to 
> only peer-reviewed journals, as some seem to suggest.

I'm for footnoting quite a lot, particularly on contentious pages - I've
seen how effective it can be in defusing editor conflicts. I'm thinking
particularly of [[United Kingdon Independence Party]], the section on
neo-Nazi infiltration. That was thrashed out between a UKIP supporter and
myself (not a supporter) using sentences each of which was followed by a
reference. The resulting paragraph is quite readable, getting its facts
across nicely, and you can look up every assertion.

That's an extreme case, but it was needed for an NPOV summary of the facts
that would survive the editing process.

(And at the moment I'm herding [[Xenu]] through Featured Article
Candidates. You can be sure *tremendous* attention is being paid to NPOV
and solid referencing ...)

You'll have the occasional Adam Carr who just *knows* his stuff. But, as
[[Wikipedia:Cite sources]] points out: "This applies even when the
information is currently undisputed - even if there's no dispute right now,
someone might come along in five years and want to dispute, verify, or
learn more about a topic." Furthermore, contributors like that are in fact
*rare*.

A culture of referencing will do wonders for the general standard of
Wikipedia.

> >Of course cranking up the standards would help, generally
> >speaking; of course making formats for references less slapdash, and having
> >some editing tools for that, would also be a plus.

> Agreed

I'd still love '''Have you included your [[Wikipedia:Cite
sources|references]]?''' on the 'Submit' boilerplate. If it doesn't lead to
[[m:Instruction creep]]. Because, you know, editors generally just don't
bother much with references, and they should.

- d.