User talk:Biogeographist

This user might or might not have an academic degree, and considers the distinction irrelevant on Wikipedia. "Wikipedia may be the largest collaborative initiative in history and influences what people the world over know or think they know. Its distinctive feature is the nonexpert, nonprofessional, noncertified, nonformal production of knowledge with credible content. Academics like to sneer at those characteristics, even as more and more of us acknowledge Wikipedia, support it, and use it in teaching. And why should we not warm to it? The rules of Wikipedia discourse are modeled after an ideal academy's. Arguments, not personal attacks or status, carry the day. ... Why, then, does Wikipedia work? In theory, it should not. In practice, it seems to be a new paradigm of organization, whose breezy anticredentialism tosses traditional hierarchies of knowledge production to the wind." Allen, Barry (January 2017). "Review of Common Knowledge?: An Ethnography of Wikipedia by Dariusz Jemielniak". Common Knowledge. 23 (1): 104. doi:10.1215/0961754X-3692492. "Thanks to a vibrant community united by a few core principles, plus detailed policies and safeguards against trolls and vandalism, Wikipedia has already become a piece of the knowledge ecosystem. Like science, its aim is to propose a synthesis of existing knowledge and conflicting interpretations of reality. ... The main criticism against Wikipedia is that it is a free-for-all domain without any professional standards. Yet even if Wikipedia has to be used with caution, it is not a free-for-all. On the contrary, the Wikipedia community has developed a consistent set of principles, rules, policies, and guidelines that have helped build consensus among a community of thousands of contributors (Jemielniak, 2014). ... Wikipedia encourages contributors to edit articles, and to reach consensus by engaging in discussion on the "talk page" in case of a disagreement. The process is typically Hegelian in nature: make an edit, then wait for the next change, and if there is opposition, seek a compromise. A variant of this policy is the BOLD, revert, discuss cycle: bold editing is openly encouraged in the policies, as it leads to discussion, which helps make articles better. This collaborative culture, which is unique to Wikipedia, makes the community a living organism, growing continuously, adapting to its environment and answering its critics." Vandendorpe, Christian (October 2015). "Wikipedia and the ecosystem of knowledge". Scholarly and Research Communication. 6 (3): 1–10. doi:10.22230/src.2015v6n3a201.

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New message to Biogeographist

My general understanding is that OCLC and analogous identifiers in citations are generally omitted as redundant for works where an ISBN, DOI etc. is present. I won't be challenging that if you prefer their presence, but I wanted to explain why. Cheers. Remsense ‥ 论 16:30, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Remsense: I prefer their presence because they provide a direct link to a lot of useful information about the source in the WorldCat catalog that is not easily available via the ISBN link. I have not read that OCLC links are generally omitted as redundant; if you have a link to a guideline where that is stated, please share it. Thanks, Biogeographist (talk) 16:36, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It is admittedly anonymous hearsay (gasp!) on my part—definitely from someone with significant GA/FA experience, I do not remember who—but I wouldn't expect it to be policy, no. I agree that WorldCat is useful to me, so I suppose I should be a bit less automatic in its application. Remsense ‥ 论 16:38, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies, it just didn't register that you were referring to the Category hatnotet link—I somehow got it into my head that that was proscribed, but upon checking I've of course totally fabricated that notion too. Sorry about the headache again. However, the reason for locations has been the guidance given in H:CS1 that location parameters redundant with the publisher name can be omitted—but if you'd prefer I can leave that alone also. Remsense ‥ 论 03:01, 26 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Remsense: I checked H:CS1, and it says, "The location parameter should be omitted when it is implied by the name of the work, e.g. The Sydney Morning Herald." That seems to refer to specifying locations for periodicals, not for publishers of books. That's news to me, since I don't remember that I've ever specified a location for periodicals. The citation style guides that I usually use off-wiki (APA, Chicago) include the location of publishers of books, so that's what I do on Wikipedia too by habit, and it seems that H:CS1 does not say that redundant locations should be omitted for books, only for periodicals. In any case, even if one omitted the location parameter when it is implied by the name of the publisher, that would apply only to a very small number of publishers, so it seems to me to be an exception not worth spending time omitting, but I see the logic of your preference for omitting it. Biogeographist (talk) 16:49, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Right, it's totally a personal preference thing, hence my deference. Thanks for not just being annoyed at my hysterical tinkering—I really have been getting familiar with the sources because I do want to contribute substantively to Dialectic, this is just my weird nesting ritual I do to get familiar with an article's present state, I guess. Remsense ‥ 论 16:53, 27 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]