Inline Templates | ||||
|
[This discussion is copied from its original source to provide historical background] -- SteveMcCluskey 13:45, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
I've seen many historical articles with statements like "Democritus found fault with the philosophers around him..." without giving examples of those unnamed philosophers. I'd like a simple in line template analagous to citation needed or original research? to go after such a vague description of unnamed actors. At present the Template name who seems to be vacant; it should expand to something like "insert specific name"
Its application would extend beyond historical articles to descriptions of current events, political and religious movements, etc.
I don't know how to go about this, but I suspect a reader of this page does. -- SteveMcCluskey 01:20, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
The current wording displayed is 'name a specific person/group'. To suddenly make an imperative statement to the reader in the middle of the paragraph doesn't make a lot of sense. This is a message to editors, not for readers. The template:fact template displays 'citation required'. This is more helpful. It alerts the reader that the current text may not be verifiable. I think something similar would be appropriate to this tag. In the absence of any better idea, I go so far as to say exactly the same 'citation required' text would be appropriate. That way, the reader would be tipped off, but the appropriate 'weasel word' category would be added to the article. Something like 'specific citation required' might also work - Crosbiesmith 19:52, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
I've changed the cat to be cromulent with the documentation. 213.48.182.7
I think this template serves a good purpose -- but doesn't serve it as effectively as it could because it's both overly specific and too harsh.
We should be able to use this template to send a polite message that attributions should be specific rather than generalized -- as both a reminder to those who already know it, and to newer editors who may in good faith believe that Wikipedia will benefit from a high-level summation of what opinions are out there on a particular issue.
This template, however, points to "Avoid weasel words". "Weasel words" is a phrase we want to be very, very careful about bandying around, because it makes strong implications of bad faith -- it implies that someone has deliberately phrased things vaguely with an intent to deceive. If an editor trying to figure out why this tag was placed next to text they added looks at the template itself, this impression will only be reinforced: "This tag is for placement after descriptions of a group of persons ... when there are no specific examples of identifiable individuals from that group that could be used to verify the statements or beliefs attributed to the group." (emphasis added) Could one read this as simply meaning "no specific examples have yet been provided?" Certainly, but one could also read it as "no specific examples could be provided and this is something the adder of the text tried to cover up with weasel words."
Consider a new editor, for instance, who adds the sentence "Many believed Rubin Carter to be innocent of the murders he was charged with." If you said to that editor "Well, who believed that?" he could easily answer you: "Bob Dylan, for one, who wrote the famous protest song ' Hurricane' about the supposed miscarriages of justice in the Carter case." If you use this tag in its current form, however, then this new editor adds a statement that is completely true, only lacking in specifics, and is BITTen for it (so it would surely be perceived) with an implied accusation that he is using "weasel words".
I feel certain that we can modify this tag so that it presents clear guidance on what needs to be improved without presenting the same implications/accusations of bad faith. -- Antaeus Feldspar 17:28, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Inline templates. I've been meaning to do this for a while. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ contrib ツ 16:31, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
With the recent (although controversial) consolidation of W:NOR, WP:V, and WP:RS into Wikipedia:Attribution, the displayed inline note attribution needed has become somewhat misleading. It could be read as synonymous with citation needed. I suggest replacing it with name specific person(s), which condenses an earlier version. -- SteveMcCluskey 14:42, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
It is proposed that {{ who?}} and {{ Views needing attribution}} be merged into {{ who}}, with the following details:
See also WT:WPILT#Weasel words for discussion of related mergers.
Which has more impact? (1) "Bob Dylan believed that Rubin Carter was innocent" (oh, well, Bob Dylan is just one person, and I don't care what he thinks) or (2) "Many believed that Rubin Carter was innocent" (oh, it was a widespread belief.. I see.)?
Certainly, where possible, it would be wonderful to be able to cite a source in such a way that we can say, "According to X source, many people believe..." But those kinds of sources are not always available, particularly to the vast majority of us who are simply using whatever we have at hand, and do not have the access, nor the time, to always find the most or the best sources. To remove the "many people" entirely in exchange for a single attributed source changes the meaning of the sentence dramatically, and in the end is just no good.
I appreciate the purpose and aim of this template, to help cut down on false allegations, but all told, when a statement such as "most scholars" or "many scholars" is true, it has more impact, is more meaningful, is more helpful, than citing only one or two sources. Consider how many outsiders, how many crazies there are, and the implications of taking a single source as true. Consider "most scholars (uncited, unsourced) believe that roughly six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust" as compared to "Noam Chomsky (cited to X, Y, and Z) believes that the Holocaust never happened." The second example cites a prominent scholar, and implies in doing so that a considerable portion of reputable scholarship supports this notion - but it's still a false statement, and fails to represent that Chomsky is an outsider, a minority opinion.
I think this sort of extra-strong attention away from so-called weasel words is a serious problem on Wikipedia, pushing us too far away from truth and into the realm of "no matter how false or misleading it is, as long as it's cited, it's okay". I realize that whoever's reading this is likely to say, "and who are you, LordAmeth, that I should take you seriously?" ... Well, I guess that outside of my admin status, my MilHist Asst Coordinator position, my long (4+ years) activity and thousands of edits, I'm nobody, just as everyone else on Wikipedia is essentially nobody with no real authority. But please do take me on good faith, and take a moment to consider what I've had to say. Thank you. LordAmeth ( talk) 08:56, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Why don't these templates use whom instead of who? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.242.168.125 ( talk) 20:11, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
This template is used in many articles and should at least be semi-protected to avoid mass vandalization. This could also be a tempting target to a vandal who looks to create a lot of trouble.
-- Jacob Myers (Flame me!) 02:29, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
Could someone add an interwiki link to [[cs:Šablona:Kdo?]]? Nazgul02 ( talk) 23:07, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
We can unify {{
who}}
, {{
says who}}
, {{
by whom}}
, and {{
which?}}
by generalizing
|text=who?
to
|text={{{1|who}}}?
This also makes it possible to vary the text in the obvious caseswhich ones? where alternative texts are more appropriate, simply by using something like {{who|which ones}}
. --
Lambiam 14:32, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
{{
Who|Some say}}
would show a little like Some saywho? - with more subtle underlining. While that might be less useful for the present case, it would be as shame to ad to the confusion.
Rich
Farmbrough, 14:42, 19 October 2010 (UTC).{{
Fix}}
does not fix a category, unlike {{
who}}
and friends, which put the article in
Category:All articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases.|text={{{q|who}}}?
{{who|q=which ones}}
. --
Lambiam 00:29, 22 October 2010 (UTC)The categories have been renamed to remove the surplus "-" (per the speedy rename notice placed on them all) . I took the opportunity to remove the "All" category at the same time - Fram has reverted saying "these are useful" (a note would have been nice) - so all the empty cats are being re-created (without the rename notice!), and will need to be deleted again. Who finds the "all" category useful and what for? Personally I find it clutters the hidden category list and makes my work a lot harder, to no benefit.
Rich
Farmbrough, 14:48, 19 October 2010 (UTC).
This message is to inform people monitoring this talk page that there is an "editprotected" request involving this and several other templates at Template talk:! cymru.lass (hit me up)⁄ (background check) 20:08, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
{{ Edit protected}} The target page at the link, Wikipedia:Avoid Weasel Words, has been moved to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (words to watch)#Unsupported attributions. Can somebody please fix this template? – Muboshgu ( talk) 00:52, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
Could the template page have a section added clarifying that this tag should not be used when a name is used, but it's unclear who they are? I've been finding this tag in plot summaries ( example). Argento Surfer ( talk) 16:50, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
In a movie synopsis (namely, the one for Tuck Everlasting), a character named Angus is mentioned but his relationship to the story's other characters is not stated, and must be inferred from other sources such as IMDb. Does anyone know of a template to mark this for cases where an editor is unable to infer the missing information without help? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Macks2008 ( talk • contribs) 02:23, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
I can't have the code for the exact change requested as and I'm no longer in touch with my inner coder, but it shouldn't be super time consuming I think.
Anyway, could we add the ability to have it say "by whom?" in addition to "who"? I guess you'd make a field "use-whom=" if set to "yes" you get the "by whom", if not used (or set to "no") you get the "who"? (You could have "case=objective" for "by whom" and "case=subjective" (or empty) for "who" or something if you want to be fancy and obscure I guess.)
It's just annoying to have to make bad grammar: "It was often said[who?] that..." is wrong and clearly wrong to most readers and is a bad look. Yeah you can usually recast the language but sometimes you don't want to. Thanks. (While you've got the hood open you could add a flag for a plain "whom?" but I'm not sure that'd ever be useful.) Herostratus ( talk) 13:51, 29 July 2023 (UTC)
Inline Templates | ||||
|
[This discussion is copied from its original source to provide historical background] -- SteveMcCluskey 13:45, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
I've seen many historical articles with statements like "Democritus found fault with the philosophers around him..." without giving examples of those unnamed philosophers. I'd like a simple in line template analagous to citation needed or original research? to go after such a vague description of unnamed actors. At present the Template name who seems to be vacant; it should expand to something like "insert specific name"
Its application would extend beyond historical articles to descriptions of current events, political and religious movements, etc.
I don't know how to go about this, but I suspect a reader of this page does. -- SteveMcCluskey 01:20, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
The current wording displayed is 'name a specific person/group'. To suddenly make an imperative statement to the reader in the middle of the paragraph doesn't make a lot of sense. This is a message to editors, not for readers. The template:fact template displays 'citation required'. This is more helpful. It alerts the reader that the current text may not be verifiable. I think something similar would be appropriate to this tag. In the absence of any better idea, I go so far as to say exactly the same 'citation required' text would be appropriate. That way, the reader would be tipped off, but the appropriate 'weasel word' category would be added to the article. Something like 'specific citation required' might also work - Crosbiesmith 19:52, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
I've changed the cat to be cromulent with the documentation. 213.48.182.7
I think this template serves a good purpose -- but doesn't serve it as effectively as it could because it's both overly specific and too harsh.
We should be able to use this template to send a polite message that attributions should be specific rather than generalized -- as both a reminder to those who already know it, and to newer editors who may in good faith believe that Wikipedia will benefit from a high-level summation of what opinions are out there on a particular issue.
This template, however, points to "Avoid weasel words". "Weasel words" is a phrase we want to be very, very careful about bandying around, because it makes strong implications of bad faith -- it implies that someone has deliberately phrased things vaguely with an intent to deceive. If an editor trying to figure out why this tag was placed next to text they added looks at the template itself, this impression will only be reinforced: "This tag is for placement after descriptions of a group of persons ... when there are no specific examples of identifiable individuals from that group that could be used to verify the statements or beliefs attributed to the group." (emphasis added) Could one read this as simply meaning "no specific examples have yet been provided?" Certainly, but one could also read it as "no specific examples could be provided and this is something the adder of the text tried to cover up with weasel words."
Consider a new editor, for instance, who adds the sentence "Many believed Rubin Carter to be innocent of the murders he was charged with." If you said to that editor "Well, who believed that?" he could easily answer you: "Bob Dylan, for one, who wrote the famous protest song ' Hurricane' about the supposed miscarriages of justice in the Carter case." If you use this tag in its current form, however, then this new editor adds a statement that is completely true, only lacking in specifics, and is BITTen for it (so it would surely be perceived) with an implied accusation that he is using "weasel words".
I feel certain that we can modify this tag so that it presents clear guidance on what needs to be improved without presenting the same implications/accusations of bad faith. -- Antaeus Feldspar 17:28, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Inline templates. I've been meaning to do this for a while. — SMcCandlish [ talk] [ contrib ツ 16:31, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
With the recent (although controversial) consolidation of W:NOR, WP:V, and WP:RS into Wikipedia:Attribution, the displayed inline note attribution needed has become somewhat misleading. It could be read as synonymous with citation needed. I suggest replacing it with name specific person(s), which condenses an earlier version. -- SteveMcCluskey 14:42, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
It is proposed that {{ who?}} and {{ Views needing attribution}} be merged into {{ who}}, with the following details:
See also WT:WPILT#Weasel words for discussion of related mergers.
Which has more impact? (1) "Bob Dylan believed that Rubin Carter was innocent" (oh, well, Bob Dylan is just one person, and I don't care what he thinks) or (2) "Many believed that Rubin Carter was innocent" (oh, it was a widespread belief.. I see.)?
Certainly, where possible, it would be wonderful to be able to cite a source in such a way that we can say, "According to X source, many people believe..." But those kinds of sources are not always available, particularly to the vast majority of us who are simply using whatever we have at hand, and do not have the access, nor the time, to always find the most or the best sources. To remove the "many people" entirely in exchange for a single attributed source changes the meaning of the sentence dramatically, and in the end is just no good.
I appreciate the purpose and aim of this template, to help cut down on false allegations, but all told, when a statement such as "most scholars" or "many scholars" is true, it has more impact, is more meaningful, is more helpful, than citing only one or two sources. Consider how many outsiders, how many crazies there are, and the implications of taking a single source as true. Consider "most scholars (uncited, unsourced) believe that roughly six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust" as compared to "Noam Chomsky (cited to X, Y, and Z) believes that the Holocaust never happened." The second example cites a prominent scholar, and implies in doing so that a considerable portion of reputable scholarship supports this notion - but it's still a false statement, and fails to represent that Chomsky is an outsider, a minority opinion.
I think this sort of extra-strong attention away from so-called weasel words is a serious problem on Wikipedia, pushing us too far away from truth and into the realm of "no matter how false or misleading it is, as long as it's cited, it's okay". I realize that whoever's reading this is likely to say, "and who are you, LordAmeth, that I should take you seriously?" ... Well, I guess that outside of my admin status, my MilHist Asst Coordinator position, my long (4+ years) activity and thousands of edits, I'm nobody, just as everyone else on Wikipedia is essentially nobody with no real authority. But please do take me on good faith, and take a moment to consider what I've had to say. Thank you. LordAmeth ( talk) 08:56, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Why don't these templates use whom instead of who? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.242.168.125 ( talk) 20:11, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
This template is used in many articles and should at least be semi-protected to avoid mass vandalization. This could also be a tempting target to a vandal who looks to create a lot of trouble.
-- Jacob Myers (Flame me!) 02:29, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
Could someone add an interwiki link to [[cs:Šablona:Kdo?]]? Nazgul02 ( talk) 23:07, 30 October 2009 (UTC)
We can unify {{
who}}
, {{
says who}}
, {{
by whom}}
, and {{
which?}}
by generalizing
|text=who?
to
|text={{{1|who}}}?
This also makes it possible to vary the text in the obvious caseswhich ones? where alternative texts are more appropriate, simply by using something like {{who|which ones}}
. --
Lambiam 14:32, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
{{
Who|Some say}}
would show a little like Some saywho? - with more subtle underlining. While that might be less useful for the present case, it would be as shame to ad to the confusion.
Rich
Farmbrough, 14:42, 19 October 2010 (UTC).{{
Fix}}
does not fix a category, unlike {{
who}}
and friends, which put the article in
Category:All articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases.|text={{{q|who}}}?
{{who|q=which ones}}
. --
Lambiam 00:29, 22 October 2010 (UTC)The categories have been renamed to remove the surplus "-" (per the speedy rename notice placed on them all) . I took the opportunity to remove the "All" category at the same time - Fram has reverted saying "these are useful" (a note would have been nice) - so all the empty cats are being re-created (without the rename notice!), and will need to be deleted again. Who finds the "all" category useful and what for? Personally I find it clutters the hidden category list and makes my work a lot harder, to no benefit.
Rich
Farmbrough, 14:48, 19 October 2010 (UTC).
This message is to inform people monitoring this talk page that there is an "editprotected" request involving this and several other templates at Template talk:! cymru.lass (hit me up)⁄ (background check) 20:08, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
{{ Edit protected}} The target page at the link, Wikipedia:Avoid Weasel Words, has been moved to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (words to watch)#Unsupported attributions. Can somebody please fix this template? – Muboshgu ( talk) 00:52, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
Could the template page have a section added clarifying that this tag should not be used when a name is used, but it's unclear who they are? I've been finding this tag in plot summaries ( example). Argento Surfer ( talk) 16:50, 10 November 2016 (UTC)
In a movie synopsis (namely, the one for Tuck Everlasting), a character named Angus is mentioned but his relationship to the story's other characters is not stated, and must be inferred from other sources such as IMDb. Does anyone know of a template to mark this for cases where an editor is unable to infer the missing information without help? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Macks2008 ( talk • contribs) 02:23, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
I can't have the code for the exact change requested as and I'm no longer in touch with my inner coder, but it shouldn't be super time consuming I think.
Anyway, could we add the ability to have it say "by whom?" in addition to "who"? I guess you'd make a field "use-whom=" if set to "yes" you get the "by whom", if not used (or set to "no") you get the "who"? (You could have "case=objective" for "by whom" and "case=subjective" (or empty) for "who" or something if you want to be fancy and obscure I guess.)
It's just annoying to have to make bad grammar: "It was often said[who?] that..." is wrong and clearly wrong to most readers and is a bad look. Yeah you can usually recast the language but sometimes you don't want to. Thanks. (While you've got the hood open you could add a flag for a plain "whom?" but I'm not sure that'd ever be useful.) Herostratus ( talk) 13:51, 29 July 2023 (UTC)