[WikiEN-l] Re: New policy proposal

Thu Dec 16 01:40:44 UTC 2004

Regarding the references tab, I coincidentally posted a similar idea
to WP:VP a few days ago. My idea differs slightly, in that I think it
would be better if the reference page was not automatically generated
from inline footnotes. Here's the text I posted on WP:VP:

----

I think that in addition to a Talk: page for each article, there
should be a References: page. With the current talk of referencing
every fact in Wikipedia (which is a great idea), this seems like the
only solution to me. Adding notes and inline links everywhere in
articles only adds clutter, especially if the information about a
reference is to include more than just a link.

My idea for the References: page is that it could mirror the section
structure of the main article. The references page could then include
prose, such as for example, "The fact that X is Y given in the first
paragraph of this section is based on Foo (1990), pages 800-803, and
supported by Bar (1992), page 456."

This way references can be provided in a way that is easier to
interpret for the reader, more information about the references can be
provided (since there's no cluttering of the articles), and editing
becomes easier than with footnotes.

The link to the "References" page should be next to the "Article" and
"Discussion" links. This would probably be easy to implement in the
software.

By the way, another argument for this is that in-article references
IMO break the excellent philosphy employed by Wikipedia that article
content should be separated from discussion about articles. Though not
discussion, references like discussion is not information about the
subject but meta-information. ("further reading" bibliography
sections, just like external links, should however still be provided
in the main article.)

Another thing is that users could be allowed to sign with their names
on the references page. That way, when a published reference work is
not available, a user could sign to assert the validity of
information. That way, information can be judged based on the
credentials of that user. This is not different from looking up who
added a piece of information using the page history, but more
convenient since many articles have several pages of revision history
listing, and users could then add more justification than there is
room for in edit summaries.

Just to clarify, this does not mean that discussion of sources should
be removed from articles entirely. Discussion of sources in the case
where facts are disputed (outside of Wikipedia, that is) is of course
relevant. But for undisputed facts, we already write "the Earth is
round", not "according to NASA, the Earth is round".

-- 
Fredrik Johansson