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Under "When adding information" we have this text:
Eliza Twisk of Amnesty International said: "This is all part of a growing trend in Europe of violent protest and equally violent response". ( Channel 4 News interview, July 8, 2000)
I can't get the link to work. Does anyone know where to find it or have an alternative text? Ironically, it's more an example of a bad source at present - one that's not really there! :) jguk 10:50, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
Comments requested at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Inline links discouraged in favor of more complete sources. ( SEWilco 08:05, 11 October 2005 (UTC))
I think a contributory factor in the lack of good references is that many people seem to interpret:
From this point of view, I think Sources would be a better title.
In some cases, I think people also treat References and External links as being sub-headings of the hypothetical Sources section, so you get a mix of see also and source material.
-- David Woolley 12:23, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I think this is a good idea. I don't totally like the word "sources" since I think that a "reference" should still be provided even if it wasn't the actual source for the information. I can't come up with a better word myself though (even checking in thesaurus.com); I worry that "citations" sounds a bit artificial; so I guess that that can just be clarified in policy pages. Mozzerati 22:33, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I think having two categories: "Sources" and "Further reading" makes good sense. I vote "yea" Slrubenstein | [[User talk:Slrubenstein|Talk]] 23:16, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Regarding the above, I've posted it on the Village Pump and on a few policy or guideline talk pages to get more feedback before changing it. To recap, the proposal is to change References to Sources and External links to Further reading.
The reason for the proposal is that using "References" and "External links" is confusing. Sources are supposed to be listed under References, and any further reading is listed under Further reading or External links. But many editors think that any external links, whether used as sources or not, should go under External links, so then they list any material that isn't online, like books, under References, even if not used as a source. To cut through all this confusion, the proposal is to change the headers to Sources and Further reading, which are self-explanatory, and don't make the online/offline distinction. Comments would be welcomed. SlimVirgin (talk) 22:02, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
I neither agree or disagree with his proposal because I think if a change is necessary it needs changing to something else that that which is suggested. Also there is the question of is this "Instruction creep" trying to prescribe the wording of headings such as "Sources" or "References" etc. Personally of the two I prefer "References" to "Sources" but I would not like to insist that either was better and because I like footnotes I am not sure that either is desirable.
-- Philip Baird Shearer 12:39, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
I largely agree with the idea of clarifying what the "References", "External links", and other headings are meant to be used as. I also don't mind changing "References" -> "Sources" or something. Though, I disagree with just changing the policy on the Wikipedia:Cite sources and other guideline/policy pages, and not changing in all the articles.
--- Aude 22:22, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
I have some queries about how the current policies operates and what it means, which are of particular concern to me most of all because I live in a country where almost all the academic books available are either in French or in Arabic.
As I understand the policy, if I reference a book in English, I am not obliged to provide a verbatim quote of what it says. The policy doesn't seem to me to imply that more stringent requirements apply when a foreign-language source is referenced. The two examples you give are both of direct quotes, and I got that bit all right. In any case, Wikipedia is full of foreign language speakers, many categorised or listed as available, so the citation of a foreign-language source (particularly in a language such as French) may make the verifiability a little more complicated, but hardly makes it impossible.
To make my concerns a bit clearer, this is an example of an article I created based entirely on one foreign language source (by a respected academic) ( here here is another example, which also would have been impossible - for me, that is - without using a foreign language source). I made two direct quotes, which I now understand I should also give in Arabic. But the rest is summarised or simply based on the Arabic source, as one normally does when using sources for any work. Should I have cited in Arabic every element of the book that I actually used? This would make the process of creating the article almost impossibly burdensome.
Also, there may well be sources available in English, but I don't have them. Does this mean I should have refrained from writing the article? I'm not claiming it's a particularly good article (in fact, looking back over it now it strikes me as pretty poor in many respects), but it gives Wikipedia some level of coverage of a notable figure in the intellectual, and to a degree political, history of the modern Middle East. Palmiro | Talk 11:24, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
Thanks David. Palmiro | Talk 14:42, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
A straw poll is being taken based on whether using only URLs in an article is an acceptable style for citing sources instead of having more detailed citations. See Talk:Global cooling#SEWilco.2C disruptive reverts.2C and citations. ( SEWilco 23:47, 24 November 2005 (UTC))
I have noted on a few occasions that WP:V has been used as a reason why an article should be deleted. However, on a number of occasions, this has been misused. Someone has stated that an article does not conform to WP:V, for example stating that "personal homepages do not count as verifiability" when in fact they were official business pages, of the business which is the focus of the article, which in fact do pass WP:V checks. This was used to manipulate the Vfd for the planes of existence (chat site) Vfd, and a number of voters then agreed with it without checking facts. Whilst many people vote with only 5 seconds of thought, it seems dishonest for people to misuse an official policy like this to steamroll a Vfd. Zordrac 20:05, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
I have added the following to the policy:
Sources which rely on guilt by association, the Association fallacy are not considered verifiable. Only a source which specifically identifies a person or organization as having engaged in a behavior can be considered adequate. This is especially true of membership in an organization and associated activities.
This phenomenon is clearly illustrated by Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Nobs01 and others
Fred Bauder 02:56, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Wow, and I thought I was clarifying! Can someone else please take a shot at this? Maybe moving entirely away from Fred's words (of which I had tried to preserve as much as possible). -- Jmabel | Talk 07:15, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
How about Charles Burgess Fry as an example. His reputation as a sportsman has never recovered because of his political sympathies in the 1930s. Maybe the two should not be associated, but they are, and any explanation of his relative sporting obscurity today is in part at least explained by his political associations the 1930s. -- Philip Baird Shearer 21:21, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Mr. Bauder: I direct you attention to this material with its qualified source,
Source: Laird Wilcox, Political Research Associates, A Study in "Links and ties", Editorial Research Service, 1999, p. 114-131. ISBN 0-993592-96-5 Parameter error in {{ ISBN}}: checksum
Wilcox is the founder of the Wilcox Collection on Contemporary Political Movements at the University of Kansas, one of the largest of its kind in the world, which contains hundreds of thousands of documents on all political movements. He is also editor and publisher of annual guides on extremism. Quoted in Racial Extremism in the Army, MAJ Walter M. Hudson, The Military Law Review, Vol 159 (Mar 99), fn 31, Department of the Army, Washington, DC. Pamphlet No 27-100-159 [2] nobs 21:52, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Moving comment by User:209.182.174.100 to Talk page Jkelly 03:43, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia editor often abuse verifiability claiming that things are not verifiable when they have not made any effort to check them out. Anyone can and does make claims that an article they don't like is unverifiable. Verifiability is often used in bad faith. -- Anonymous
Wiki openess is a good way to attract contributions but the quality is not so good in verifiability. You can avoid wasting efforts by concentrating verification towards Wikipedia:Stable versions. -- Zondor 10:15, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I am a trouble maker aren't I. I have noticed A9 integrates Wikipedia well using Answers.com, the information is useful but is it reliable?. Stable versions would be part of the total solution. Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikicite has a project idea that dedicates a datasource of full citation information for every citation in the article integrated into the wiki syntax. People should be able to easily know the level of trust with the article by some sort of disclaimer whether they have been cited, reviewed or not ( Wikipedia:Trust model). -- Zondor 09:54, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
Over time, standards at Wikipedia have changed. Some policies are now clearer and more specific than they were before. I agree that it is a good thing that people provide sources for their information. I believe this very strongly, and am in fact in a conflict with RJII on the Capitalism and Talk:Capitalism pages, because he makes claims about communism without providing sources, and deletes my edits even when I provide sources. That said, I think it is also important to remember that this is a collaborative project. To my way of thinking, this means that ideally we each make up for other people's weaknesses, as they do for us. Sometimes someone knows something although they do not have a source at hand. All I can tell you is what I have done under these circumstances — what I do represents my attempt to balance between our verifiability policy and our assume good faith guideline. Clearly, the policy is more important than the guideline, but the guideline is important to keeping this a collaborative work. What I do is this: if I have strong reason to believe that a claim is false and unverifiable, I delete it and explain why. However, if I have doubts about a claim but am not certain that it is wrong, I remove it to the talk section and ask others if they know what sources support the claim. My point is, we have an alternative to keep/delete. Bringing questionable material to the talk page invites discussion, gives someone a chance to defend or improve the claim, and is often taken to be a sign of respect to the other editor. Sometimes, this is worthwhile. Slrubenstein | Talk 23:28, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Is archive material which is accessable in one place an acceptable reference in a Wikipedia article if it has not been published or referenced in another published source.
EG This is a footnote reference on the Chindits page:
-- Philip Baird Shearer 13:24, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
An RfC has been opened recently concerning an editor who has spread fringe theories and original research over a wide array of articles making clever use of cross- and self-referencing, thus making his contributions looking sufficiently sourced and verifiable to editors who assume good faith. Finding a solution to this problem is of eminent importance to Wikipedia's future reliability and verifiability. Please weigh in at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Roylee. — mark ✎ 13:46, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
I have removed the following text from the project page:
I have done so for two reasons
There is no official policy on notability, but rather ongoing consensus debates everywhere. I am referring to when someone says on an AfD "Delete, not notable," or makes a similar argument for exclusion of info from an article, as you yourself have done at Mark Ames without citing any policy. This is fine, but not directly related to the issue of verifiability.
You still have not answered why publishing fake prisoner abuse photos doesn't make the Mirror a "bad" source. Dsol 15:36, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
Seems to me that it is perfectly OK to give examples of dubious reporting, as long as they are used as such (that is, as examples). Obviously, we wouldn't cite the Weekly World News as a factual source, but it is perfectly legitimate in the article on the Weekly World News to give examples of the outrageous content:
Semi-regular stories follow the progress of Bat Boy, the half-bat, half-boy superhero; and P'lod, an extraterrestrial who became involved in Earth politics and had an affair with Hillary Clinton. … Likewise, throughout 2003, just prior to the capture of Saddam Hussein, and persisting after his capture, WWN ran a series of articles on an alleged (and obviously made-up) homosexual romance between Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
![]() | 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 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 |
Under "When adding information" we have this text:
Eliza Twisk of Amnesty International said: "This is all part of a growing trend in Europe of violent protest and equally violent response". ( Channel 4 News interview, July 8, 2000)
I can't get the link to work. Does anyone know where to find it or have an alternative text? Ironically, it's more an example of a bad source at present - one that's not really there! :) jguk 10:50, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
Comments requested at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Inline links discouraged in favor of more complete sources. ( SEWilco 08:05, 11 October 2005 (UTC))
I think a contributory factor in the lack of good references is that many people seem to interpret:
From this point of view, I think Sources would be a better title.
In some cases, I think people also treat References and External links as being sub-headings of the hypothetical Sources section, so you get a mix of see also and source material.
-- David Woolley 12:23, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I think this is a good idea. I don't totally like the word "sources" since I think that a "reference" should still be provided even if it wasn't the actual source for the information. I can't come up with a better word myself though (even checking in thesaurus.com); I worry that "citations" sounds a bit artificial; so I guess that that can just be clarified in policy pages. Mozzerati 22:33, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I think having two categories: "Sources" and "Further reading" makes good sense. I vote "yea" Slrubenstein | [[User talk:Slrubenstein|Talk]] 23:16, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Regarding the above, I've posted it on the Village Pump and on a few policy or guideline talk pages to get more feedback before changing it. To recap, the proposal is to change References to Sources and External links to Further reading.
The reason for the proposal is that using "References" and "External links" is confusing. Sources are supposed to be listed under References, and any further reading is listed under Further reading or External links. But many editors think that any external links, whether used as sources or not, should go under External links, so then they list any material that isn't online, like books, under References, even if not used as a source. To cut through all this confusion, the proposal is to change the headers to Sources and Further reading, which are self-explanatory, and don't make the online/offline distinction. Comments would be welcomed. SlimVirgin (talk) 22:02, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
I neither agree or disagree with his proposal because I think if a change is necessary it needs changing to something else that that which is suggested. Also there is the question of is this "Instruction creep" trying to prescribe the wording of headings such as "Sources" or "References" etc. Personally of the two I prefer "References" to "Sources" but I would not like to insist that either was better and because I like footnotes I am not sure that either is desirable.
-- Philip Baird Shearer 12:39, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
I largely agree with the idea of clarifying what the "References", "External links", and other headings are meant to be used as. I also don't mind changing "References" -> "Sources" or something. Though, I disagree with just changing the policy on the Wikipedia:Cite sources and other guideline/policy pages, and not changing in all the articles.
--- Aude 22:22, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
I have some queries about how the current policies operates and what it means, which are of particular concern to me most of all because I live in a country where almost all the academic books available are either in French or in Arabic.
As I understand the policy, if I reference a book in English, I am not obliged to provide a verbatim quote of what it says. The policy doesn't seem to me to imply that more stringent requirements apply when a foreign-language source is referenced. The two examples you give are both of direct quotes, and I got that bit all right. In any case, Wikipedia is full of foreign language speakers, many categorised or listed as available, so the citation of a foreign-language source (particularly in a language such as French) may make the verifiability a little more complicated, but hardly makes it impossible.
To make my concerns a bit clearer, this is an example of an article I created based entirely on one foreign language source (by a respected academic) ( here here is another example, which also would have been impossible - for me, that is - without using a foreign language source). I made two direct quotes, which I now understand I should also give in Arabic. But the rest is summarised or simply based on the Arabic source, as one normally does when using sources for any work. Should I have cited in Arabic every element of the book that I actually used? This would make the process of creating the article almost impossibly burdensome.
Also, there may well be sources available in English, but I don't have them. Does this mean I should have refrained from writing the article? I'm not claiming it's a particularly good article (in fact, looking back over it now it strikes me as pretty poor in many respects), but it gives Wikipedia some level of coverage of a notable figure in the intellectual, and to a degree political, history of the modern Middle East. Palmiro | Talk 11:24, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
Thanks David. Palmiro | Talk 14:42, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
A straw poll is being taken based on whether using only URLs in an article is an acceptable style for citing sources instead of having more detailed citations. See Talk:Global cooling#SEWilco.2C disruptive reverts.2C and citations. ( SEWilco 23:47, 24 November 2005 (UTC))
I have noted on a few occasions that WP:V has been used as a reason why an article should be deleted. However, on a number of occasions, this has been misused. Someone has stated that an article does not conform to WP:V, for example stating that "personal homepages do not count as verifiability" when in fact they were official business pages, of the business which is the focus of the article, which in fact do pass WP:V checks. This was used to manipulate the Vfd for the planes of existence (chat site) Vfd, and a number of voters then agreed with it without checking facts. Whilst many people vote with only 5 seconds of thought, it seems dishonest for people to misuse an official policy like this to steamroll a Vfd. Zordrac 20:05, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
I have added the following to the policy:
Sources which rely on guilt by association, the Association fallacy are not considered verifiable. Only a source which specifically identifies a person or organization as having engaged in a behavior can be considered adequate. This is especially true of membership in an organization and associated activities.
This phenomenon is clearly illustrated by Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Nobs01 and others
Fred Bauder 02:56, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Wow, and I thought I was clarifying! Can someone else please take a shot at this? Maybe moving entirely away from Fred's words (of which I had tried to preserve as much as possible). -- Jmabel | Talk 07:15, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
How about Charles Burgess Fry as an example. His reputation as a sportsman has never recovered because of his political sympathies in the 1930s. Maybe the two should not be associated, but they are, and any explanation of his relative sporting obscurity today is in part at least explained by his political associations the 1930s. -- Philip Baird Shearer 21:21, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Mr. Bauder: I direct you attention to this material with its qualified source,
Source: Laird Wilcox, Political Research Associates, A Study in "Links and ties", Editorial Research Service, 1999, p. 114-131. ISBN 0-993592-96-5 Parameter error in {{ ISBN}}: checksum
Wilcox is the founder of the Wilcox Collection on Contemporary Political Movements at the University of Kansas, one of the largest of its kind in the world, which contains hundreds of thousands of documents on all political movements. He is also editor and publisher of annual guides on extremism. Quoted in Racial Extremism in the Army, MAJ Walter M. Hudson, The Military Law Review, Vol 159 (Mar 99), fn 31, Department of the Army, Washington, DC. Pamphlet No 27-100-159 [2] nobs 21:52, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
Moving comment by User:209.182.174.100 to Talk page Jkelly 03:43, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia editor often abuse verifiability claiming that things are not verifiable when they have not made any effort to check them out. Anyone can and does make claims that an article they don't like is unverifiable. Verifiability is often used in bad faith. -- Anonymous
Wiki openess is a good way to attract contributions but the quality is not so good in verifiability. You can avoid wasting efforts by concentrating verification towards Wikipedia:Stable versions. -- Zondor 10:15, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I am a trouble maker aren't I. I have noticed A9 integrates Wikipedia well using Answers.com, the information is useful but is it reliable?. Stable versions would be part of the total solution. Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikicite has a project idea that dedicates a datasource of full citation information for every citation in the article integrated into the wiki syntax. People should be able to easily know the level of trust with the article by some sort of disclaimer whether they have been cited, reviewed or not ( Wikipedia:Trust model). -- Zondor 09:54, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
Over time, standards at Wikipedia have changed. Some policies are now clearer and more specific than they were before. I agree that it is a good thing that people provide sources for their information. I believe this very strongly, and am in fact in a conflict with RJII on the Capitalism and Talk:Capitalism pages, because he makes claims about communism without providing sources, and deletes my edits even when I provide sources. That said, I think it is also important to remember that this is a collaborative project. To my way of thinking, this means that ideally we each make up for other people's weaknesses, as they do for us. Sometimes someone knows something although they do not have a source at hand. All I can tell you is what I have done under these circumstances — what I do represents my attempt to balance between our verifiability policy and our assume good faith guideline. Clearly, the policy is more important than the guideline, but the guideline is important to keeping this a collaborative work. What I do is this: if I have strong reason to believe that a claim is false and unverifiable, I delete it and explain why. However, if I have doubts about a claim but am not certain that it is wrong, I remove it to the talk section and ask others if they know what sources support the claim. My point is, we have an alternative to keep/delete. Bringing questionable material to the talk page invites discussion, gives someone a chance to defend or improve the claim, and is often taken to be a sign of respect to the other editor. Sometimes, this is worthwhile. Slrubenstein | Talk 23:28, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Is archive material which is accessable in one place an acceptable reference in a Wikipedia article if it has not been published or referenced in another published source.
EG This is a footnote reference on the Chindits page:
-- Philip Baird Shearer 13:24, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
An RfC has been opened recently concerning an editor who has spread fringe theories and original research over a wide array of articles making clever use of cross- and self-referencing, thus making his contributions looking sufficiently sourced and verifiable to editors who assume good faith. Finding a solution to this problem is of eminent importance to Wikipedia's future reliability and verifiability. Please weigh in at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Roylee. — mark ✎ 13:46, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
I have removed the following text from the project page:
I have done so for two reasons
There is no official policy on notability, but rather ongoing consensus debates everywhere. I am referring to when someone says on an AfD "Delete, not notable," or makes a similar argument for exclusion of info from an article, as you yourself have done at Mark Ames without citing any policy. This is fine, but not directly related to the issue of verifiability.
You still have not answered why publishing fake prisoner abuse photos doesn't make the Mirror a "bad" source. Dsol 15:36, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
Seems to me that it is perfectly OK to give examples of dubious reporting, as long as they are used as such (that is, as examples). Obviously, we wouldn't cite the Weekly World News as a factual source, but it is perfectly legitimate in the article on the Weekly World News to give examples of the outrageous content:
Semi-regular stories follow the progress of Bat Boy, the half-bat, half-boy superhero; and P'lod, an extraterrestrial who became involved in Earth politics and had an affair with Hillary Clinton. … Likewise, throughout 2003, just prior to the capture of Saddam Hussein, and persisting after his capture, WWN ran a series of articles on an alleged (and obviously made-up) homosexual romance between Hussein and Osama bin Laden.