[WikiEN-l] Verifiability

Sat Dec 17 01:50:15 UTC 2005

David Gerard wrote:

>Steve Bennett wrote:
>  
>
>>There really should be different sourcing guidelines for different
>>fields in Wikipedia - popular culture is just "different" to history,
>>science or geography.
>>    
>>
>Some sort of referencing should be possible. For TV or movie synopses,
>the text itself as an implicit reference is obvious and sufficient, for
>example.
>
To some extent we can make use of "standard" references.  The Internet 
Movie Data Base is a good example for movies, but that won't work for 
everything.  Many subjects, however, are more controversial and the 
standards there need to be more stringent .

>>I also suspect that a guideline could say somewhere that if it's
>>possible to verify something on google, then that may be good enough in
>>some circumstances.  As opposed to making a claim that cannot be
>>verified even by someone searching the entire internet.
>>    
>>
>If there's nothing else, that's fine again IMO. Any usable reference is
>better than none.
>
>(Though that's not to say that really crappy references will do just
>because they're on the net somewhere. One has to use that thing called
>"editorial judgement.")
>
Editorial judgement is important.  Google is really a mixed blessing on 
this.  Simply saying that something gets some number of Google hits is 
not enough.  One needs to make a critical evaluation of those linked 
sites.  One needs to distinguish between an academic study and 
somebody's blog..  Speaking as a person for whom book collecting is an 
addiction I have many references that I can use, but that is not 
convenient for many people.  The first versions of material may not be 
perfect, and the verifying material may not be perfect.  When material 
is challenged there must be reasonable time its supporters to find 
verification.

Ec