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As noted above, the 'Annotations' section may need some work. It's confusing on the first read though I've found after going over it a few times it does start to make sense. I think there are more serious issues though. First, an annotation is meant to be supplemental material and is therefore very different from a citation. So it seems doubtful that a guideline on annotations belongs here at all. Part of the section seems to be trying to encourage adding explanatory remarks to long lists of of references or further reading lists so readers have an idea of what to expect without looking up each one. An example of this is section of Simplex algorithm#Further reading, a typical entry is
The annotation is in parentheses here. These may be helpful but they could lead to verifiability and POV issues in themselves, e.g.
The example given does not seem me what we should be encouraging as a best practice. It appears in the text to be a citation but when you read the footnote it's just a list of books and doesn't support the statement at all. If this was an article I was working on I'd move the footnote to a 'Further reading' section since it does not belong in the references section.
The last sentence talks about long annotations and I agree that if they are used at all then they should be kept short or moved into the main text. I'm wondering if we should be encouraging their use though. As example something like
should probably be rewritten
In any case this does not seem to be a scientific issue so it's unclear why it would be here rather than another guideline.-- RDBury ( talk) 01:47, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
I think it is quite useful, when giving citations to textbooks, to give several books rather than one, if there are several common options> I also think that short annotation, like in footnote 17 of the current revision [1], are helpful. Of course they could be overdone, and I personally dislike too-subjective annotations. But matter-of-fact descriptions are fine by me.
The goal of references in an encyclopedia is not only to verify facts. Like a review paper, an encyclopedia article is intended to be a starting point for a reader, not an ending point. So our references are also intended to make it easy for readers to go further into the literature. Pointing out which references are textbooks, and which are suitable for undergraduates or for a general audience, is an important part of our role. For topics that are well covered by textbooks, we do our readers a disservice if we fail to point this out. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 19:05, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
It's interesting to compare what's happening here with Citizendium which says that their references are for the reader's benefit, not to resolve disputes between editors. 89.241.232.14 ( talk) 00:33, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
There should be in-line citations only, unless those are not available. Bibliographies lead to long lists of arbitrary titles, the relevance of which for the article is not clear or absent. The real information gets lost into irrelevant information.-- Wickey-nl ( talk) 16:06, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
This content guideline on citing sources has a vague scope, misleading title, extends into issues not pertaining specifically to science articles, deviates from policy, doesn't document best practice, and merely reflects the opinions of a few wikiproject members. It should be removed from the Category:Wikipedia content guidelines and placed into project space. Colin° Talk 22:24, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
Specifically
1. It claims to be a Wikipedia content guideline on citing sources for scientific articles. But the comments on attribution and annotations (i.e., an opinionated bibliography) fall outside of this scope. The "Examples, derivations and restatements" is a guideline on WP:NOR rather than WP:V. It would probably be helpful if the scope was increased to include issues beyond just source citations.
2. Its title (scientific) is misleading. I'm getting the impression editors here write articles on mathematics and theoretical physics rather than experimental science. I appreciate there is a sub-heading saying "Mathematics, Physics, Molecular and cellular biology and Chemistry." but the title is still problematic. The discussion on the need to cite original sources highlights the difference between the type of "science" being written about here and the sort of science that most other disciplines follow. For example, the comment "there is no other source that can describe an original idea as faithful as the original publication." and "Well, ideas usually don't get worse over time.".
3. It covers ground that isn't specific to "science" articles. For example, whether to use inline citations and what the references section is for (sources, or bibliography). This is also relevant to the (now deleted) section on summary style.
4. It deviates from policy. For example, requiring the primary sources be cited "even if they are not used as sources in writing the article", and the emphasis on using original sources unless they have been shown to be erroneous.
5. It is the personal opinion of some editors at a few wikiprojects, rather than being a content guideline accepted by Wikipedia. (see comments like "This page reflects the priorities of editors from certain WikiProjects about what we expect in our best articles.") Indeed, Joke137 ( talk · contribs) had the right idea when he created this page and flagged it with "Opinions are the author's and are not necessarily shared by WikiProject Physics, but they should be." The page has changed remarkably little since.
6. It does not document best practice. Our FA articles on "Mathematics, Physics, Molecular and cellular biology and Chemistry." do not follow the guidelines in this article. Specifically, the requirement to provide attribution for original thought or discoveries through citing the original works as sources, the mixed use of inline citations to support WP:V and to provide a bibliography.
I believe this page should be removed from Category:Wikipedia content guidelines and placed into project space. I think editors here actually want to document more than just their opinions on citations but also want to be left to agree among themselves rather than accept the limitations and outside influence that a formal Wikipedia guideline would impose. Colin° Talk 22:16, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
This RfC seems like sour grapes for failing to impose one's opinions in a few very narrow respects that are mostly MOS-like than anything else (although MOS-type stuff creating the biggest ruckus in Wikipedia doesn't surprise me at all.) So, I vote keep this as guideline because it's generally useful. Tijfo098 ( talk) 06:56, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
Regarding point 6 above, it is not difficult to find examples of featured articles that cite the sources of original publication of their topics. For example, General relativity, Aldol reaction, Quark, Nicotinamide_adenine_dinucleotide, Oxidative_phosphorylation, Euclidean algorithm. Often these are in the "History" section of the FA article, or in the lede. Whenever you're writing a carefully-sourced document that includes an historical survey, which could be an encyclopedia article, a review article, or just the introduction to a research paper, you will include citations to the original paper whenever you claim that someone discovered something. It's such a standard practice that the lack of such a reference would be noticed by a referee. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 00:05, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
"Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia. It incorporates elements of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers." Geometry guy 23:09, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
Whoa, hang on a minute: " WP:Five pillars isn't a policy. It's (just) an essay." and you all agree with that??? That is fabulously wrong on a historical and practical level. The Five Pillars are (and always have been) the fundamental principles of the encyclopedia from which policies and guidelines flow through consensus interpretation of these principles. WP:5 is uber-policy, not an essay! That is something which every editor needs to get straight, whether they wish to wikilawyer or not. Geometry guy 01:26, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
Discussion at Wikipedia talk:5P already addresses the above. While 5P is an essay, it simply and concisely summarizes policies detailled elsewhere. It introduces nothing that isn't already in a policy elsewhere. If there was something in 5P that significantly disagreed with a real policy, it would be promptly updated to resolve the difference. So let's not get hung up on the policy/essay distinction, it's ephemeral. LeadSongDog come howl! 04:25, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia articles on teenage pop singers don't interest me in the least. Nor do articles on professional wrestling (and they can be pretty incomprehensible). I find some articles on cell biology and medicine hard to understand and I would encourage efforts to make such articles more widely accessible. Would I constrain the encyclopedia only to interest me and write in a way adapted to my understanding? No, don't be daft. Geometry guy 23:06, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
We've strayed from the point somewhat. The maths experts are writing a different encyclopaedia from the rest of us, and have given up making articles accessible. I can choose to ignore that but when they start imposing their style of writing articles on "science", which the title and the scope sentence includes, then I'm less happy. Really the grand "scientific citation guidelines" is too general and this guideline should be renamed.
The second problem is that this guideline was and to a lesser extent still is badly written and covers stuff that aren't relevant to a sourcing guideline. You guys had ideas about what you were using citations for but the text used to demand we "should strive to provide the original reference for any discovery, breakthrough, or novel theoretical development". That is neither practical or desirable for most of science, and appears to contradict policy at WP:PSTS on sourcing (this is supposed to be a sourcing guideline). The text used to demand "citing the original papers, even if they are not used as sources", which is pretty strange thing for a source citation guideline to advise. The text used to repeat the nonsense about summary style being exempt from WP:V. The text used to have a section on annotations that had a ridiculous and non-specific multi-source citation. These things have been fixed.
The text still has its own "Articles without in-line references" despite the fact that WP has an essay, a guideline and a policy covering this issue quite well thank you. The text spends too much time on eponyms which are nothing to do with source citations. The final section is related to WP:NOR rather than citing sources, so should perhaps go somewhere else. Colin° Talk 23:28, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
A quick google books search shows that Snake lemma is included in a huge number of books. Almost any graduate text on algebra seems to include it. It's also interesting to note that WP:MTAA has been downgraded from a guideline to an essay earlier this year; see discussion, particularly the characterization "strident and uncompromising". Tijfo098 ( talk) 03:27, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
This section isn't covering any "remaining" issues; it's just a reiteration of the same issues from the other sections above. Tijfo098 ( talk) 07:16, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
I agree that a wording that says original works should be cited even when not used as sources does not make sense. I do think that the guidelines should state that citing original works is desirable for scientific breakthroughs and novel theoretic advancements, both for the significant value of such papers, historical accuracy, and attribution. This may be done as easily as in "In the seminal paper by XYZ,[ref] ...". Primary sources in such cases are meant as complements to secondary sources and not as replacements. Exceptions may be made for (1) very recent papers, which are peer-reviewed but for which secondary literature does not exist yet, (2) highly specialized results, as long as they are peer-reviewed and cited by other scientific papers, and (3) standards documents that are issued by officially recognized standards organizations such as the ISO, IEEE, or IETF. Please, think about why I excluded these three categories before crying out again. Nageh ( talk) 09:41, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
I've explained my take on the issue of what should be cited and for what purpose in #Why it is important to cite original sources above. Tijfo098 ( talk) 21:41, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
I want to address this non-stopping complaint by some people that maths people are ignorant and do not want to make their articles comprehensible. This is not the case. The problem lies somewhere else. In contrast to all other sciences, mathematics and similar formal sciences (computer theory (in Knuth's sense), logic, statistics) do not rely on observations in real life, i.e., they are no empirical studies. This makes is somewhat difficult to explain advanced topics to laymen because for empiric studies you can always say "this follows because that can be observed", and everyone will understand, even if not comprehending the deeper connections. In mathematics, you would say "this follows because of that theorem", but while an observation is easily accepted as the cause, a theorem is usually not understandable at all to a layman. In empirical studies you may ask "why can you observe that?", and you may follow a wiki link to another topic explaining the phenomena. Doing so is limited in mathematics because you cannot insert (meaningful) wiki links in mathematical expressions, and while you may add an explanatory remark saying which rule(s) you have applied, as long as the rule is no specific (named) theorem the endless chain of rules that had to be noted to go down to the axiomatic system makes this effort impossible. From this follows that understanding mathematical expressions requires acquiring a certain understanding of the mathematical language. This is in principle no different than learning other (natural) languages where you need to start with the spelling, the grammar, and simple vocabulary to comprehend more advanced texts. The difference though is that while spelling and vocabulary (the mathematical notations) and grammar (the axiomatic system) are quite small in the mathematical language, the increasingly complex phrases (theorems) that you can build based on these rules is sheer overwhelming, and the best you can do to understand more advanced texts is to learn and understand a lot of these phrases (as well as techniques to construct new phrases).
Another aspect makes explaining formal sciences often difficult to the layman. Formal sciences are often inherently theoretic, with no direct (but certainly many indirect) applications in real-life. This makes writing a layman's introduction difficult, because the immediate use is only for other mathematical theorems.
I am sorry if I have not been able to express myself more clearly on this subject. You may want to inquire your nearest philosophy professor, s/he will certainly be more capable.
In conclusion, I think that the least of the maths folks are as ignorant as some may think, as it is ultimately the desire of anyone (any teacher) explaining a topic to make it as easily accessible as possible. If you think we are not doing our best you are welcome to make constructive suggestions for improvement.
Thank you for your reading, Nageh ( talk) 09:11, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
Thank-you for your explanation, Nageh. I don't think you or anyone else here is ignorant, indeed erudite is the word that comes to mind. I've been on Wikipedia for five years, and (apart from a period when I was active at Featured Lists) have spent what little free time I have for WP trying to ensure our medical articles are accurate and accessible. Our medical experts (of which I am not one) are, I believe, particularly willing to target their articles at the "general reader" because they feel little need to write for their peers. What doctor would rely on Wikipedia for medical advice, or medical student for information for her exam, or researcher for a review of the literature? They have their own professional publications and online resources. Another reason many medical experts write on Wikipedia is to ensure the Web has an accurate resource on the subject, when there is so much crap elsewhere. Mathematics is not unique in having topics where the barrier to entry is high: biochemistry, molecular biology and genetics can be impenetrable in areas, and medicine has plenty jargon to contend with.
Like many passionate debates, this one has got polarised. This has the unfortunate effect of making one write in a more "black and white" (as someone put it above) way. It also has led me to make assumptions based on what I've read here rather than perhaps what is true if I were to read more articles and contributions. At the centre has been this imperfect guideline. I'm grateful to those editors who have overcome any (natural and understandable) defensiveness and have agreed the wording could be improved. Misunderstanding is the cause of many an argument: there's what the text said; there's what I interpreted it as saying; and there's what you thought it said or assumed it said.
I have held that Wikipedia is written for the "general reader" for so many years that it is difficult for me to accept differently. I've read the WP:MANYTHINGS essay that Geometry guy linked, and it may surprise you that I find myself agreeing with much of it. The lack of editorial control and resource limitations ( WP:NOTPAPER) isn't necessarily a good thing, however, when one wants to write an article that won't bore the reader rigid. I was taught in writing that the first step is to determine who one's audience is. Another vital skill is knowing what not to say just as much as what to say. Perhaps it is unfortunate that Wikipedia is the only successful wiki knowledge-base, and that professionals and academics don't have their own space (Medical alternatives like Ganfyd and Medpedia haven't had our success, I don't know if the maths folk have tried anything). Or perhaps that's a good thing as it encourages experts here.
I have respect for those who wish to share their knowledge on Wikipedia and am sorry if I've made any of you feel bad. I haven't "made up sturdily [my] mind" and this discussion has certainly given me something to think about. I hope we can all be friends on Wikipedia. Sorry this response is a bit long. I give you one of my favourite sketches: Armstrong and Miller Physics Special You've probably seen it before and I've posted it before elsewhere. Rather appropriate, I think. Still makes me laugh. Cheers, Colin° Talk 22:36, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
There's a new essay and proposed guideline on the contents of "Further reading" sections at WP:Further reading. It is still only a couple of days old, so constructive comments are more useful than !votes at this point. I'm posting this notification because it's related to the extensive discussion here of when to use inline citations, the advice given here on further reading annotations, and the discussion when the original/primary sources are worth mentioning that way. Tijfo098 ( talk) 04:42, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
I am new to Wikepedia and I had a coding problem that has been resolved and a stylistic problem that has not. My experience may suggest an opportunity for additional cross referencing that might save future users from despondency or departure.
I posted a request for help on my User talk:Michael P. Barnett page to find out how to make multiple references to a single citation. I received quickly a very clear reply routing me to Wikipedia:Referencing for beginners. This resolved my coding problem, but not the styling difficulty. I am not certain how I got there, but I think I decided that if there is Referencing for beginners site there might be a Referencing site. There is, and that is where the round of troubles that I have just resolved began. My transfer to the Reference site was redirected to Citation. Scanning this, by eye, led me to Scientific citations. I looked at the main article briefly, then at the Discussion, and commented (agreeing) with the two comments that had been posted. Then I looked at the article itself, and typed a detailed critique. Essentially, it seems to belong to a body of information (?) that is disjoint from the professional world in which I have worked for over 60 years. During the two weeks in which I have edited Wikepedia articles, the only comments I have heard from high school and college students and their parents, and librarians, are that Wikepedia is very unreliable and must NOT be cited in any papers as a source of information. I was not encouraged by Scientific citations.
I found the site where I am typing in a web search! I have tried several link jumps from Citation and they lead to Scientific citations. Neither of the categories Bibliography or Reference lead here.
I have worked with base aligned reference numbers for so long I have difficulty restructuring my sentences to superscript style, without the result looking bizarre. For example, how do I rewrite: "The principles that underlie the methodology are explained, e.g., in [1, 2], the theoretical basis in [2, 3, 4], and actual examples of its applications comprise or are included in [1,4,5]". This may just be a flaw in my writing style that I have to amend to work with Wikepedia, but I find myself writing sentences like this very often. Thanks Michael P. Barnett ( talk) 02:47, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
P.S. Would it be potentially helpful to future users to include, under heading "Writing for superscript citations": Authors who are accustomed to the use of baseline aligned citation numbers may need to alter their writing style slightly to use superscript citation numbers. For example "The principles that underlie the methodology are explained, e.g., in [1, 2], the theoretical basis in [2, 3, 4], and actual examples of its applications comprise or are included in [1,4,5]." can be paraphrased to "The principles that underlie the methodology are explained, e.g., by Smith[1], Jones[2], the theoretical basis in Jones[2], Johnson[3], and Black[4], and actual examples of its applications comprise or are included in Smith[1], Black[4], and White[5].". If it is worth putting this in, should it go here or in Wikipedia:Referencing for beginners or both? Michael P. Barnett ( talk) 16:46, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Editors here may be interested in the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/example style#why_not_standardize_on_one_format.3F, an effort to impose a one-size-fits-all citation style on every article. My overall impression is that the goals are to ban general references, to require the use of <ref> tags (banning WP:PAREN and all other forms of WP:Inline citations), and to require the use of citation templates. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 04:20, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
Since Wikipedia is not paper, we rightly advise editors that journal titles need not be abbreviated, even though that is common practice in printed journals. I would like to suggest that we extend the same advice to page numbers. Many articles use the unpleasant PubMed approach of abbreviating page numbers when they are over 100. Not only is this unnecessary, it is also potentially confusing: "110–99" (meaning "110–199") could be interpreted as a backwards range of 11 pages, rather than a forward range of 89. That confusion is not very likely, I admit, but since there is no reason at all for using such abbreviations, could we not add a note to that effect to this guideline? -- Stemonitis ( talk) 08:54, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
I think this is potentially controversial. It probably needs more clarification as to how original the example may be. I propose that it's okay to provide an original example when it can be easily verified by the reader given the information in the article, and assuming fluency at level of the topic discussed. If I came up with Stone duality myself (and did not publish it elsewhere first) and gave that as example at equivalence of categories, or something derived from that (like Stone's representation theorem for Boolean algebras) as example at isomorphism, doing so would be pushing the boundaries of WP:OR way too much. Tijfo098 ( talk) 22:28, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
Right after that sentence there is a footnote saying "See Manifold Destiny for a possible counterexample." I miss the subtlety, and I suspect I'm not alone in this... Tijfo098 ( talk) 03:50, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
This section is isn't a discussion attribution in the sense of WP:NPOV, but rather when to cite wp:primary sources for something having implicit attribution, like a named theorem, which (evidently) is already attributed. Tijfo098 ( talk) 22:41, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
If I read it correctly, it's an experimental result from a primary source. What if another source comes up with a different number? In any case it's confusing at best for anyone not knowing the topic, so it probably doesn't belong here. Tijfo098 ( talk) 02:02, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
In regard of author and editor names, should we lean towards full names (as in "Smith, John"), or last name and initials ("Smith, J.")? - J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 18:40, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
See WP:Centralized_discussion/Citation_discussion#Full_name, or initials? for additional comments.
I have raised a query at:
Wikipedia:No original research/Noticeboard#Can new formula be put in to a scientific article?
about an issue at Planck's law and the interpretation of Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines#Examples, derivations and restatements Dmcq ( talk) 12:44, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
I've just deleted the following phrase, from the recently added list of examples of routine calcualations: summarizing data sets (e.g., by providing the range, mean, or median rather than the full list of raw data). There has been some controversy over this issue at Usage share of operating systems. Certainly finding the median of a list of numbers is a simple calculation, but the interpretation of the result is unclear. When summarising a data set via a median (or mean or other statistic), it's possible to create a misleading impression; the assertion that a single number is a valid summary of a data set is dangerously close to original research in my opinion. I think that a clear consensus needs to emerge before adding any guidelines to this page. Jowa fan ( talk) 00:47, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
There's been a proposal to delete the harvard citation style templates. I know the detailed citation style is not really the subject of this guideline, but editors here may still find this of interest. Please see Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2012 January 24#Template:Harvard citation and comment there. — David Eppstein ( talk) 00:22, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
I've encountered a fair bit of confusion over how the policies on primary sources apply to scientific citations, since the situation is different than it is in non-scientific fields. Specifically, the scientific guidelines support the use of both secondary sources such as review articles as well as primary research articles. I would like to propose the following two cleanup tags as an alternative to {{ Primary sources}} for scientific articles:
This
scientific article relies primarily on
references to primary research articles, but it needs more references to review articles to establish their context and notability. Please add
citations from
reliable sources. |
This
scientific article relies primarily on
references to review articles, but it needs more references to primary research articles to provide attribution and verify details. Please add
citations from
reliable sources. |
Please let me know what you think.
Antony–22 (
talk⁄
contribs) 02:13, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
I am having arguments with science article editors about the usefulness of citations. Some seem to think that citations are not needed for assertions. On Talk:Big Bang I am having a cn tag reverted because an assertion "does not need a citation". A similar argument is going on in Talk:Uncertainty principle because "it is egregiously unreasonable to expect a truckload of one's preferred quantum mechanics texts tacked on for "verification"?!" I fear that there are a great many of these editors, which accounts for the lack of citations in science articles. Myrvin ( talk) 15:20, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
I am coming across science articles where an editor uses a whole textbook as a citation. Perhaps this guideline should stress that, for books, the page number(s) in which the support resides needs to be stated. An example of this is in Uncertainty principle, where I am having difficulty arguing that more citations are needed. An editor has now replaced my tags with a citation for a whole textbook. His/her argument is that the article is not a tutorial. Myrvin ( talk) 13:30, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
{{
pn}}
tag.
LeadSongDog
come howl! 17:31, 23 January 2015 (UTC)To the average reader, the source matters more than the page number. The page number only matters if you want to look things up. Granted, {{ rp}} doesn't eliminate that problem, but at least it keeps the source just a click away. (Can you tell my background is not in a field where they use footnotes and ibid very often?) Guettarda ( talk) 16:00, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
Thank you everyone, but the question on the table is can we beef up this guideline to say that citations to books should always contain the page numbers on which the support can be found? How about something in Citation format" along the lines of: "For cited books, it is important that the pages, in which the supportive evidence can be found, are included." Myrvin ( talk) 16:51, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
the average reader, the source matters more than the page number." I think it is less a matter of more importance than that for a first-level validation of sources it is often sufficient to know just the source (typically author[s] and year). If the reader is familiar with the field, or has already looked up the source, the additional bibliographic detail is not necessary. (If not, then the additional details of title, publisher, etc., are quite likely not sufficient.) Having an additional detail (e.g., page number) is no hinderance, but not having it greatly hinders actual verification. And as our requirement here is, per WP:V, "looking things up", not the reader experience, I am strongly inclined to require specification. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 23:52, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
This article cites its sources but its
page references ranges are too broad or incorrect. |
The reasoning in sections of this article/article is often circular, and the examples poorly persuasive; they appear to be clearly written by persons with a very great distance from the needs and expectations of a typical WP user.
The three physics statements here, Wikipedia:Scientific_citation_guidelines#Uncontroversial_knowledge, should never appear without a citation: they are not common knowledge in any sense (stated as a physical sciences prof), and they further demand, for sake of readers, at least one source each that would allow a non-expert reader to followup the all-but-gibberish, jargonistic content to a source they could actually read and understand. The existence of such "policies" here bespeaks WP's early origins in rapid content generation from communities with histories of online content creation, where the level of "communication to oneself" was staggering.
But WP is not a maths or physics forum: it is a general, authoritative encyclopedia. If a statement is not understood to the high school and early collegiate reading population, prima facie, it is over-technical, and without sources appearing to allow education to continue, over-technical content appearing in Wikipedia is generally useless. It only continues the time-honoured process of academics talking to themselves (before classrooms, in their writings, etc.).
The very same applies to the example of the Aldol reaction—a reaction I have performed and taught, and article I admire and whose principle academic author I have met, but an article that is not as precisely sourced as it needs to be to be generally useful to younger students. (You will see, if you look to discussions of this very good article, that issue has been taken with its level being too sophisticated; this concern is exacerbated when large tracts of text lack reference to more remedial explanatory sources.)
Finally, the reference to the low basis theorem article, here, Wikipedia:Scientific_citation_guidelines#Articles_without_in-line_references, as an example of proper sourcing is all the more egregious. One should never allow stubs to be accepted as articles without proper inline citations. Let us put on our thinking caps. With 1-2 sentences, and all sources in bullets, yes, the correspondence between content and source is clear. But what transpires when immediately following edits are done, and further content is added? Two things, clearly:
Moreover, half the citations in the earlier and current
low basis theorem article are books without page numbers, and all are either books lacking page numbers, or long articles of 30-40 pages or more. No, a thousand times no. This is not a good example of how we should direct editors to create new content for science articles.
On both of these points, these policies are achieving what they inadvertently support: sloppy sourcing practices on new and developing articles. These practices give tremendous support to views that WP articles are simply not useful as materials through which students learn about science and its communication (except, as here, as sources of poor examples in pedagogy). Le Prof (User:Leprof_7272). 71.201.62.200 ( talk) 21:19, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
"Using the methods of recursive function theory we derive several results about the degrees of solvability of members of certain… classes of functions (i.e. degrees of branches of certain recursive trees). As a special case we obtain information on the degrees of consistent extensions of axiomatizable theories, in particular effectively inseparable theories such as Peano arithmetic, P."
In mathematics, proofs and the techniques used in proofs are often as useful, if not more useful than the results themselves. Under item 4, "Examples, derivations and restatements" it says that a including a different derivation is perfectly acceptable, and in fact "encouraged", but this leaves open the possibility that the only available reference for a proof using the technique used in a Wikipedia article is the article itself.
For example, in Atom (measure theory) there appears a theorem on non-atomic measures. The proof that appears on that page uses Zorn's lemma. The proof by Wacław Sierpiński appearing in the cited article does not. The closest I could find, using the Wikipedia page as a starting point, is the hint in exercise 2:14.8 (a) of Real Analysis that says to use "some form of Zorn’s lemma." If I am writing a mathematical paper, exactly what am I supposed to cite as the source of the proof given on the Wikipedia page, the hint in the exercise in the source document, the Wikipedia page itself, or "obviousness", or "folklore"? In what way is the proof given in the Wikipedia article not original research?
I am placing my question here and not on the talk page of that article because I believe that the question is addressed to Wikipedia guidelines that apply to more than just that one page. -- Penguian ( talk) 12:24, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
As noted above, the 'Annotations' section may need some work. It's confusing on the first read though I've found after going over it a few times it does start to make sense. I think there are more serious issues though. First, an annotation is meant to be supplemental material and is therefore very different from a citation. So it seems doubtful that a guideline on annotations belongs here at all. Part of the section seems to be trying to encourage adding explanatory remarks to long lists of of references or further reading lists so readers have an idea of what to expect without looking up each one. An example of this is section of Simplex algorithm#Further reading, a typical entry is
The annotation is in parentheses here. These may be helpful but they could lead to verifiability and POV issues in themselves, e.g.
The example given does not seem me what we should be encouraging as a best practice. It appears in the text to be a citation but when you read the footnote it's just a list of books and doesn't support the statement at all. If this was an article I was working on I'd move the footnote to a 'Further reading' section since it does not belong in the references section.
The last sentence talks about long annotations and I agree that if they are used at all then they should be kept short or moved into the main text. I'm wondering if we should be encouraging their use though. As example something like
should probably be rewritten
In any case this does not seem to be a scientific issue so it's unclear why it would be here rather than another guideline.-- RDBury ( talk) 01:47, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
I think it is quite useful, when giving citations to textbooks, to give several books rather than one, if there are several common options> I also think that short annotation, like in footnote 17 of the current revision [1], are helpful. Of course they could be overdone, and I personally dislike too-subjective annotations. But matter-of-fact descriptions are fine by me.
The goal of references in an encyclopedia is not only to verify facts. Like a review paper, an encyclopedia article is intended to be a starting point for a reader, not an ending point. So our references are also intended to make it easy for readers to go further into the literature. Pointing out which references are textbooks, and which are suitable for undergraduates or for a general audience, is an important part of our role. For topics that are well covered by textbooks, we do our readers a disservice if we fail to point this out. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 19:05, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
It's interesting to compare what's happening here with Citizendium which says that their references are for the reader's benefit, not to resolve disputes between editors. 89.241.232.14 ( talk) 00:33, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
There should be in-line citations only, unless those are not available. Bibliographies lead to long lists of arbitrary titles, the relevance of which for the article is not clear or absent. The real information gets lost into irrelevant information.-- Wickey-nl ( talk) 16:06, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
This content guideline on citing sources has a vague scope, misleading title, extends into issues not pertaining specifically to science articles, deviates from policy, doesn't document best practice, and merely reflects the opinions of a few wikiproject members. It should be removed from the Category:Wikipedia content guidelines and placed into project space. Colin° Talk 22:24, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
Specifically
1. It claims to be a Wikipedia content guideline on citing sources for scientific articles. But the comments on attribution and annotations (i.e., an opinionated bibliography) fall outside of this scope. The "Examples, derivations and restatements" is a guideline on WP:NOR rather than WP:V. It would probably be helpful if the scope was increased to include issues beyond just source citations.
2. Its title (scientific) is misleading. I'm getting the impression editors here write articles on mathematics and theoretical physics rather than experimental science. I appreciate there is a sub-heading saying "Mathematics, Physics, Molecular and cellular biology and Chemistry." but the title is still problematic. The discussion on the need to cite original sources highlights the difference between the type of "science" being written about here and the sort of science that most other disciplines follow. For example, the comment "there is no other source that can describe an original idea as faithful as the original publication." and "Well, ideas usually don't get worse over time.".
3. It covers ground that isn't specific to "science" articles. For example, whether to use inline citations and what the references section is for (sources, or bibliography). This is also relevant to the (now deleted) section on summary style.
4. It deviates from policy. For example, requiring the primary sources be cited "even if they are not used as sources in writing the article", and the emphasis on using original sources unless they have been shown to be erroneous.
5. It is the personal opinion of some editors at a few wikiprojects, rather than being a content guideline accepted by Wikipedia. (see comments like "This page reflects the priorities of editors from certain WikiProjects about what we expect in our best articles.") Indeed, Joke137 ( talk · contribs) had the right idea when he created this page and flagged it with "Opinions are the author's and are not necessarily shared by WikiProject Physics, but they should be." The page has changed remarkably little since.
6. It does not document best practice. Our FA articles on "Mathematics, Physics, Molecular and cellular biology and Chemistry." do not follow the guidelines in this article. Specifically, the requirement to provide attribution for original thought or discoveries through citing the original works as sources, the mixed use of inline citations to support WP:V and to provide a bibliography.
I believe this page should be removed from Category:Wikipedia content guidelines and placed into project space. I think editors here actually want to document more than just their opinions on citations but also want to be left to agree among themselves rather than accept the limitations and outside influence that a formal Wikipedia guideline would impose. Colin° Talk 22:16, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
This RfC seems like sour grapes for failing to impose one's opinions in a few very narrow respects that are mostly MOS-like than anything else (although MOS-type stuff creating the biggest ruckus in Wikipedia doesn't surprise me at all.) So, I vote keep this as guideline because it's generally useful. Tijfo098 ( talk) 06:56, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
Regarding point 6 above, it is not difficult to find examples of featured articles that cite the sources of original publication of their topics. For example, General relativity, Aldol reaction, Quark, Nicotinamide_adenine_dinucleotide, Oxidative_phosphorylation, Euclidean algorithm. Often these are in the "History" section of the FA article, or in the lede. Whenever you're writing a carefully-sourced document that includes an historical survey, which could be an encyclopedia article, a review article, or just the introduction to a research paper, you will include citations to the original paper whenever you claim that someone discovered something. It's such a standard practice that the lack of such a reference would be noticed by a referee. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 00:05, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
"Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia. It incorporates elements of general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, and gazetteers." Geometry guy 23:09, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
Whoa, hang on a minute: " WP:Five pillars isn't a policy. It's (just) an essay." and you all agree with that??? That is fabulously wrong on a historical and practical level. The Five Pillars are (and always have been) the fundamental principles of the encyclopedia from which policies and guidelines flow through consensus interpretation of these principles. WP:5 is uber-policy, not an essay! That is something which every editor needs to get straight, whether they wish to wikilawyer or not. Geometry guy 01:26, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
Discussion at Wikipedia talk:5P already addresses the above. While 5P is an essay, it simply and concisely summarizes policies detailled elsewhere. It introduces nothing that isn't already in a policy elsewhere. If there was something in 5P that significantly disagreed with a real policy, it would be promptly updated to resolve the difference. So let's not get hung up on the policy/essay distinction, it's ephemeral. LeadSongDog come howl! 04:25, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia articles on teenage pop singers don't interest me in the least. Nor do articles on professional wrestling (and they can be pretty incomprehensible). I find some articles on cell biology and medicine hard to understand and I would encourage efforts to make such articles more widely accessible. Would I constrain the encyclopedia only to interest me and write in a way adapted to my understanding? No, don't be daft. Geometry guy 23:06, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
We've strayed from the point somewhat. The maths experts are writing a different encyclopaedia from the rest of us, and have given up making articles accessible. I can choose to ignore that but when they start imposing their style of writing articles on "science", which the title and the scope sentence includes, then I'm less happy. Really the grand "scientific citation guidelines" is too general and this guideline should be renamed.
The second problem is that this guideline was and to a lesser extent still is badly written and covers stuff that aren't relevant to a sourcing guideline. You guys had ideas about what you were using citations for but the text used to demand we "should strive to provide the original reference for any discovery, breakthrough, or novel theoretical development". That is neither practical or desirable for most of science, and appears to contradict policy at WP:PSTS on sourcing (this is supposed to be a sourcing guideline). The text used to demand "citing the original papers, even if they are not used as sources", which is pretty strange thing for a source citation guideline to advise. The text used to repeat the nonsense about summary style being exempt from WP:V. The text used to have a section on annotations that had a ridiculous and non-specific multi-source citation. These things have been fixed.
The text still has its own "Articles without in-line references" despite the fact that WP has an essay, a guideline and a policy covering this issue quite well thank you. The text spends too much time on eponyms which are nothing to do with source citations. The final section is related to WP:NOR rather than citing sources, so should perhaps go somewhere else. Colin° Talk 23:28, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
A quick google books search shows that Snake lemma is included in a huge number of books. Almost any graduate text on algebra seems to include it. It's also interesting to note that WP:MTAA has been downgraded from a guideline to an essay earlier this year; see discussion, particularly the characterization "strident and uncompromising". Tijfo098 ( talk) 03:27, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
This section isn't covering any "remaining" issues; it's just a reiteration of the same issues from the other sections above. Tijfo098 ( talk) 07:16, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
I agree that a wording that says original works should be cited even when not used as sources does not make sense. I do think that the guidelines should state that citing original works is desirable for scientific breakthroughs and novel theoretic advancements, both for the significant value of such papers, historical accuracy, and attribution. This may be done as easily as in "In the seminal paper by XYZ,[ref] ...". Primary sources in such cases are meant as complements to secondary sources and not as replacements. Exceptions may be made for (1) very recent papers, which are peer-reviewed but for which secondary literature does not exist yet, (2) highly specialized results, as long as they are peer-reviewed and cited by other scientific papers, and (3) standards documents that are issued by officially recognized standards organizations such as the ISO, IEEE, or IETF. Please, think about why I excluded these three categories before crying out again. Nageh ( talk) 09:41, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
I've explained my take on the issue of what should be cited and for what purpose in #Why it is important to cite original sources above. Tijfo098 ( talk) 21:41, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
I want to address this non-stopping complaint by some people that maths people are ignorant and do not want to make their articles comprehensible. This is not the case. The problem lies somewhere else. In contrast to all other sciences, mathematics and similar formal sciences (computer theory (in Knuth's sense), logic, statistics) do not rely on observations in real life, i.e., they are no empirical studies. This makes is somewhat difficult to explain advanced topics to laymen because for empiric studies you can always say "this follows because that can be observed", and everyone will understand, even if not comprehending the deeper connections. In mathematics, you would say "this follows because of that theorem", but while an observation is easily accepted as the cause, a theorem is usually not understandable at all to a layman. In empirical studies you may ask "why can you observe that?", and you may follow a wiki link to another topic explaining the phenomena. Doing so is limited in mathematics because you cannot insert (meaningful) wiki links in mathematical expressions, and while you may add an explanatory remark saying which rule(s) you have applied, as long as the rule is no specific (named) theorem the endless chain of rules that had to be noted to go down to the axiomatic system makes this effort impossible. From this follows that understanding mathematical expressions requires acquiring a certain understanding of the mathematical language. This is in principle no different than learning other (natural) languages where you need to start with the spelling, the grammar, and simple vocabulary to comprehend more advanced texts. The difference though is that while spelling and vocabulary (the mathematical notations) and grammar (the axiomatic system) are quite small in the mathematical language, the increasingly complex phrases (theorems) that you can build based on these rules is sheer overwhelming, and the best you can do to understand more advanced texts is to learn and understand a lot of these phrases (as well as techniques to construct new phrases).
Another aspect makes explaining formal sciences often difficult to the layman. Formal sciences are often inherently theoretic, with no direct (but certainly many indirect) applications in real-life. This makes writing a layman's introduction difficult, because the immediate use is only for other mathematical theorems.
I am sorry if I have not been able to express myself more clearly on this subject. You may want to inquire your nearest philosophy professor, s/he will certainly be more capable.
In conclusion, I think that the least of the maths folks are as ignorant as some may think, as it is ultimately the desire of anyone (any teacher) explaining a topic to make it as easily accessible as possible. If you think we are not doing our best you are welcome to make constructive suggestions for improvement.
Thank you for your reading, Nageh ( talk) 09:11, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
Thank-you for your explanation, Nageh. I don't think you or anyone else here is ignorant, indeed erudite is the word that comes to mind. I've been on Wikipedia for five years, and (apart from a period when I was active at Featured Lists) have spent what little free time I have for WP trying to ensure our medical articles are accurate and accessible. Our medical experts (of which I am not one) are, I believe, particularly willing to target their articles at the "general reader" because they feel little need to write for their peers. What doctor would rely on Wikipedia for medical advice, or medical student for information for her exam, or researcher for a review of the literature? They have their own professional publications and online resources. Another reason many medical experts write on Wikipedia is to ensure the Web has an accurate resource on the subject, when there is so much crap elsewhere. Mathematics is not unique in having topics where the barrier to entry is high: biochemistry, molecular biology and genetics can be impenetrable in areas, and medicine has plenty jargon to contend with.
Like many passionate debates, this one has got polarised. This has the unfortunate effect of making one write in a more "black and white" (as someone put it above) way. It also has led me to make assumptions based on what I've read here rather than perhaps what is true if I were to read more articles and contributions. At the centre has been this imperfect guideline. I'm grateful to those editors who have overcome any (natural and understandable) defensiveness and have agreed the wording could be improved. Misunderstanding is the cause of many an argument: there's what the text said; there's what I interpreted it as saying; and there's what you thought it said or assumed it said.
I have held that Wikipedia is written for the "general reader" for so many years that it is difficult for me to accept differently. I've read the WP:MANYTHINGS essay that Geometry guy linked, and it may surprise you that I find myself agreeing with much of it. The lack of editorial control and resource limitations ( WP:NOTPAPER) isn't necessarily a good thing, however, when one wants to write an article that won't bore the reader rigid. I was taught in writing that the first step is to determine who one's audience is. Another vital skill is knowing what not to say just as much as what to say. Perhaps it is unfortunate that Wikipedia is the only successful wiki knowledge-base, and that professionals and academics don't have their own space (Medical alternatives like Ganfyd and Medpedia haven't had our success, I don't know if the maths folk have tried anything). Or perhaps that's a good thing as it encourages experts here.
I have respect for those who wish to share their knowledge on Wikipedia and am sorry if I've made any of you feel bad. I haven't "made up sturdily [my] mind" and this discussion has certainly given me something to think about. I hope we can all be friends on Wikipedia. Sorry this response is a bit long. I give you one of my favourite sketches: Armstrong and Miller Physics Special You've probably seen it before and I've posted it before elsewhere. Rather appropriate, I think. Still makes me laugh. Cheers, Colin° Talk 22:36, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
There's a new essay and proposed guideline on the contents of "Further reading" sections at WP:Further reading. It is still only a couple of days old, so constructive comments are more useful than !votes at this point. I'm posting this notification because it's related to the extensive discussion here of when to use inline citations, the advice given here on further reading annotations, and the discussion when the original/primary sources are worth mentioning that way. Tijfo098 ( talk) 04:42, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
I am new to Wikepedia and I had a coding problem that has been resolved and a stylistic problem that has not. My experience may suggest an opportunity for additional cross referencing that might save future users from despondency or departure.
I posted a request for help on my User talk:Michael P. Barnett page to find out how to make multiple references to a single citation. I received quickly a very clear reply routing me to Wikipedia:Referencing for beginners. This resolved my coding problem, but not the styling difficulty. I am not certain how I got there, but I think I decided that if there is Referencing for beginners site there might be a Referencing site. There is, and that is where the round of troubles that I have just resolved began. My transfer to the Reference site was redirected to Citation. Scanning this, by eye, led me to Scientific citations. I looked at the main article briefly, then at the Discussion, and commented (agreeing) with the two comments that had been posted. Then I looked at the article itself, and typed a detailed critique. Essentially, it seems to belong to a body of information (?) that is disjoint from the professional world in which I have worked for over 60 years. During the two weeks in which I have edited Wikepedia articles, the only comments I have heard from high school and college students and their parents, and librarians, are that Wikepedia is very unreliable and must NOT be cited in any papers as a source of information. I was not encouraged by Scientific citations.
I found the site where I am typing in a web search! I have tried several link jumps from Citation and they lead to Scientific citations. Neither of the categories Bibliography or Reference lead here.
I have worked with base aligned reference numbers for so long I have difficulty restructuring my sentences to superscript style, without the result looking bizarre. For example, how do I rewrite: "The principles that underlie the methodology are explained, e.g., in [1, 2], the theoretical basis in [2, 3, 4], and actual examples of its applications comprise or are included in [1,4,5]". This may just be a flaw in my writing style that I have to amend to work with Wikepedia, but I find myself writing sentences like this very often. Thanks Michael P. Barnett ( talk) 02:47, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
P.S. Would it be potentially helpful to future users to include, under heading "Writing for superscript citations": Authors who are accustomed to the use of baseline aligned citation numbers may need to alter their writing style slightly to use superscript citation numbers. For example "The principles that underlie the methodology are explained, e.g., in [1, 2], the theoretical basis in [2, 3, 4], and actual examples of its applications comprise or are included in [1,4,5]." can be paraphrased to "The principles that underlie the methodology are explained, e.g., by Smith[1], Jones[2], the theoretical basis in Jones[2], Johnson[3], and Black[4], and actual examples of its applications comprise or are included in Smith[1], Black[4], and White[5].". If it is worth putting this in, should it go here or in Wikipedia:Referencing for beginners or both? Michael P. Barnett ( talk) 16:46, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
Editors here may be interested in the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Citing sources/example style#why_not_standardize_on_one_format.3F, an effort to impose a one-size-fits-all citation style on every article. My overall impression is that the goals are to ban general references, to require the use of <ref> tags (banning WP:PAREN and all other forms of WP:Inline citations), and to require the use of citation templates. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 04:20, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
Since Wikipedia is not paper, we rightly advise editors that journal titles need not be abbreviated, even though that is common practice in printed journals. I would like to suggest that we extend the same advice to page numbers. Many articles use the unpleasant PubMed approach of abbreviating page numbers when they are over 100. Not only is this unnecessary, it is also potentially confusing: "110–99" (meaning "110–199") could be interpreted as a backwards range of 11 pages, rather than a forward range of 89. That confusion is not very likely, I admit, but since there is no reason at all for using such abbreviations, could we not add a note to that effect to this guideline? -- Stemonitis ( talk) 08:54, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
I think this is potentially controversial. It probably needs more clarification as to how original the example may be. I propose that it's okay to provide an original example when it can be easily verified by the reader given the information in the article, and assuming fluency at level of the topic discussed. If I came up with Stone duality myself (and did not publish it elsewhere first) and gave that as example at equivalence of categories, or something derived from that (like Stone's representation theorem for Boolean algebras) as example at isomorphism, doing so would be pushing the boundaries of WP:OR way too much. Tijfo098 ( talk) 22:28, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
Right after that sentence there is a footnote saying "See Manifold Destiny for a possible counterexample." I miss the subtlety, and I suspect I'm not alone in this... Tijfo098 ( talk) 03:50, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
This section is isn't a discussion attribution in the sense of WP:NPOV, but rather when to cite wp:primary sources for something having implicit attribution, like a named theorem, which (evidently) is already attributed. Tijfo098 ( talk) 22:41, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
If I read it correctly, it's an experimental result from a primary source. What if another source comes up with a different number? In any case it's confusing at best for anyone not knowing the topic, so it probably doesn't belong here. Tijfo098 ( talk) 02:02, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
In regard of author and editor names, should we lean towards full names (as in "Smith, John"), or last name and initials ("Smith, J.")? - J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 18:40, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
See WP:Centralized_discussion/Citation_discussion#Full_name, or initials? for additional comments.
I have raised a query at:
Wikipedia:No original research/Noticeboard#Can new formula be put in to a scientific article?
about an issue at Planck's law and the interpretation of Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines#Examples, derivations and restatements Dmcq ( talk) 12:44, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
I've just deleted the following phrase, from the recently added list of examples of routine calcualations: summarizing data sets (e.g., by providing the range, mean, or median rather than the full list of raw data). There has been some controversy over this issue at Usage share of operating systems. Certainly finding the median of a list of numbers is a simple calculation, but the interpretation of the result is unclear. When summarising a data set via a median (or mean or other statistic), it's possible to create a misleading impression; the assertion that a single number is a valid summary of a data set is dangerously close to original research in my opinion. I think that a clear consensus needs to emerge before adding any guidelines to this page. Jowa fan ( talk) 00:47, 18 November 2011 (UTC)
There's been a proposal to delete the harvard citation style templates. I know the detailed citation style is not really the subject of this guideline, but editors here may still find this of interest. Please see Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2012 January 24#Template:Harvard citation and comment there. — David Eppstein ( talk) 00:22, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
I've encountered a fair bit of confusion over how the policies on primary sources apply to scientific citations, since the situation is different than it is in non-scientific fields. Specifically, the scientific guidelines support the use of both secondary sources such as review articles as well as primary research articles. I would like to propose the following two cleanup tags as an alternative to {{ Primary sources}} for scientific articles:
This
scientific article relies primarily on
references to primary research articles, but it needs more references to review articles to establish their context and notability. Please add
citations from
reliable sources. |
This
scientific article relies primarily on
references to review articles, but it needs more references to primary research articles to provide attribution and verify details. Please add
citations from
reliable sources. |
Please let me know what you think.
Antony–22 (
talk⁄
contribs) 02:13, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
I am having arguments with science article editors about the usefulness of citations. Some seem to think that citations are not needed for assertions. On Talk:Big Bang I am having a cn tag reverted because an assertion "does not need a citation". A similar argument is going on in Talk:Uncertainty principle because "it is egregiously unreasonable to expect a truckload of one's preferred quantum mechanics texts tacked on for "verification"?!" I fear that there are a great many of these editors, which accounts for the lack of citations in science articles. Myrvin ( talk) 15:20, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
I am coming across science articles where an editor uses a whole textbook as a citation. Perhaps this guideline should stress that, for books, the page number(s) in which the support resides needs to be stated. An example of this is in Uncertainty principle, where I am having difficulty arguing that more citations are needed. An editor has now replaced my tags with a citation for a whole textbook. His/her argument is that the article is not a tutorial. Myrvin ( talk) 13:30, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
{{
pn}}
tag.
LeadSongDog
come howl! 17:31, 23 January 2015 (UTC)To the average reader, the source matters more than the page number. The page number only matters if you want to look things up. Granted, {{ rp}} doesn't eliminate that problem, but at least it keeps the source just a click away. (Can you tell my background is not in a field where they use footnotes and ibid very often?) Guettarda ( talk) 16:00, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
Thank you everyone, but the question on the table is can we beef up this guideline to say that citations to books should always contain the page numbers on which the support can be found? How about something in Citation format" along the lines of: "For cited books, it is important that the pages, in which the supportive evidence can be found, are included." Myrvin ( talk) 16:51, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
the average reader, the source matters more than the page number." I think it is less a matter of more importance than that for a first-level validation of sources it is often sufficient to know just the source (typically author[s] and year). If the reader is familiar with the field, or has already looked up the source, the additional bibliographic detail is not necessary. (If not, then the additional details of title, publisher, etc., are quite likely not sufficient.) Having an additional detail (e.g., page number) is no hinderance, but not having it greatly hinders actual verification. And as our requirement here is, per WP:V, "looking things up", not the reader experience, I am strongly inclined to require specification. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) ( talk) 23:52, 3 February 2015 (UTC)
This article cites its sources but its
page references ranges are too broad or incorrect. |
The reasoning in sections of this article/article is often circular, and the examples poorly persuasive; they appear to be clearly written by persons with a very great distance from the needs and expectations of a typical WP user.
The three physics statements here, Wikipedia:Scientific_citation_guidelines#Uncontroversial_knowledge, should never appear without a citation: they are not common knowledge in any sense (stated as a physical sciences prof), and they further demand, for sake of readers, at least one source each that would allow a non-expert reader to followup the all-but-gibberish, jargonistic content to a source they could actually read and understand. The existence of such "policies" here bespeaks WP's early origins in rapid content generation from communities with histories of online content creation, where the level of "communication to oneself" was staggering.
But WP is not a maths or physics forum: it is a general, authoritative encyclopedia. If a statement is not understood to the high school and early collegiate reading population, prima facie, it is over-technical, and without sources appearing to allow education to continue, over-technical content appearing in Wikipedia is generally useless. It only continues the time-honoured process of academics talking to themselves (before classrooms, in their writings, etc.).
The very same applies to the example of the Aldol reaction—a reaction I have performed and taught, and article I admire and whose principle academic author I have met, but an article that is not as precisely sourced as it needs to be to be generally useful to younger students. (You will see, if you look to discussions of this very good article, that issue has been taken with its level being too sophisticated; this concern is exacerbated when large tracts of text lack reference to more remedial explanatory sources.)
Finally, the reference to the low basis theorem article, here, Wikipedia:Scientific_citation_guidelines#Articles_without_in-line_references, as an example of proper sourcing is all the more egregious. One should never allow stubs to be accepted as articles without proper inline citations. Let us put on our thinking caps. With 1-2 sentences, and all sources in bullets, yes, the correspondence between content and source is clear. But what transpires when immediately following edits are done, and further content is added? Two things, clearly:
Moreover, half the citations in the earlier and current
low basis theorem article are books without page numbers, and all are either books lacking page numbers, or long articles of 30-40 pages or more. No, a thousand times no. This is not a good example of how we should direct editors to create new content for science articles.
On both of these points, these policies are achieving what they inadvertently support: sloppy sourcing practices on new and developing articles. These practices give tremendous support to views that WP articles are simply not useful as materials through which students learn about science and its communication (except, as here, as sources of poor examples in pedagogy). Le Prof (User:Leprof_7272). 71.201.62.200 ( talk) 21:19, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
"Using the methods of recursive function theory we derive several results about the degrees of solvability of members of certain… classes of functions (i.e. degrees of branches of certain recursive trees). As a special case we obtain information on the degrees of consistent extensions of axiomatizable theories, in particular effectively inseparable theories such as Peano arithmetic, P."
In mathematics, proofs and the techniques used in proofs are often as useful, if not more useful than the results themselves. Under item 4, "Examples, derivations and restatements" it says that a including a different derivation is perfectly acceptable, and in fact "encouraged", but this leaves open the possibility that the only available reference for a proof using the technique used in a Wikipedia article is the article itself.
For example, in Atom (measure theory) there appears a theorem on non-atomic measures. The proof that appears on that page uses Zorn's lemma. The proof by Wacław Sierpiński appearing in the cited article does not. The closest I could find, using the Wikipedia page as a starting point, is the hint in exercise 2:14.8 (a) of Real Analysis that says to use "some form of Zorn’s lemma." If I am writing a mathematical paper, exactly what am I supposed to cite as the source of the proof given on the Wikipedia page, the hint in the exercise in the source document, the Wikipedia page itself, or "obviousness", or "folklore"? In what way is the proof given in the Wikipedia article not original research?
I am placing my question here and not on the talk page of that article because I believe that the question is addressed to Wikipedia guidelines that apply to more than just that one page. -- Penguian ( talk) 12:24, 25 June 2015 (UTC)