[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools on en: (was Do I misunderstand Wikipedia? On notability and encyclopedic merit.)

Thu May 19 11:50:48 UTC 2005

Gregory Maxwell said:
> Often the cost of finding a citation (if indeed
> one is available) for a particular point which is obvious to anyone who
> has studied the references, is just too great.  As time goes on we will
> find more and more things where the material in the various
> wikiprojects is some of the highest quality material
> available, and we would have to ask ourselves, must we cite
> inferior information because of a silly policy when no one disputes
> what we would like to provide?
>

I'm sure we could both find examples where we'd both agree that a citation
was either unnecessary or not worth compiling.  I suspect that any
meaningful examples would be rather contrived.
Someone objected to the use of the word "evolved" in the article "centipede":

"...and jaw-like mandibles and other mouthparts that [[evolution|evolved]]
from modified appendages."
He edited it with the summary "no scientific evidence of evolution",
removing this part: "and other mouthparts that [[evolution|evolved]] from
modified appendages"
I peremptorily reverted with the summary "this is not fundypedia", because
diversification and specialization of such organs in arthropods has been
well established for over a century.
Should we cite down to this level? I think not, but mainly because we can
link internally.  The word "evolved" is linked to "evolution" and that
article cites Darwin and Mayr, who (although the latter citation would
probably make at least one acquaintance, an embryologist, wince and mutter
about panadaptationism) seem to be adequate, as well as quite a lot of
online resources.  Thus scientific ideas can be presented in a Wiki
without the need to annotate every sentence.  In any case the interested
reader can go to the Tree of Life project's entry on Chilopoda (an
external link in the Centipede article) and find a host of references,
including exhaustive examinations of the morphology, philogeny and
evolution of centipedes, which are a particular example of diversification
about the arthropod's characteristic modular bauplan of repeated segments
whose characteristics, research strongly suggests, are controlled by gene
expression.