Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check/Archive 2

This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check. 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

A technique for tooltips

tooltip in ation

A list of references at the bottom of an article is quite boring, most people don't want to know. Look at User:Taka/Tooltips and see what a small change in the user stylesheet can do for creating additional information which shows at hovering over a piece of text. I am aware that it is not fully applicable yet. --Taka 07:31, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Excellent work on tooltips! If you can, please submit a proposal candidate #3 to give your idea on how it could work. It would be easy to take candidate #1 and #2 and format it the way you'd like :). --ShaunMacPherson 10:07, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

While this is a really cool idea, I disagree that it should be our preferred referencing style, as it is not set by default. What use is referencing if only a few people can read them? I believe we should revisit this if/when it becomes default, but until then, we should focus on something that can be done. -[[User:Frazzydee|Frazzydee|✍]] 00:13, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I agree that this method isn't ready for implementation. It requires changes in the stylesheet, so it never can be "default". Also it changes the print version of an article, and it does not work in a very commonly used broweser: Internet Explorer. All those might be overcome, but it needs updates in the wikisoftware. As for using references/comments in the wikipedia, my idea would be to develop a (new) standard wiki-syntax for inserting those, and then have different options for display for users to choose from. Then this could be one of the ways to display them. --Taka 13:32, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Proposals for formatting

Several people are itching to get ready and start fact checking. I see several people have started fact checking some articles in /fact talk pages, which is excellent.

Instead of waiting for 'smart' footnotes to be coded into MediaWiki many members, and myself, think it is time that we move the project forward. I propose we vote on several candidates that we will use as a template to format articles for fact and reference checking. I see many good ideas here, including a tooltip idea that maybe useful in our format. Please make a candidate if you think you have a formatting method that will be useful.

Please leave comments here if you have any ideas or suggestions on the vote for a formatting candidate. --ShaunMacPherson 10:07, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Voting section

Why do we have a section for voting when all proposals have not yet been submitted, and it hasn't even officially started? I think the voting section should only be added once it has officially begun. Doing otherwise also makes it easy for people to vote once, and forget about coming back to see any other proposals added. -[[User:Frazzydee|Frazzydee|✍]] 00:10, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Article of the week/month or Biweekly special article

Once we have decided on how we are going to reference articles, I propose on creating an article of the week/month/two weeks. This is an article that we will focus on for a week, two weeks or a month, depending on how people vote.

I couldn't think of a very good name for having an article that we focus on for two weeks. I figured biweekly special article sounds the best, but please speak up if you have a better idea!

The draft of the official message that will be put on the project page can be found here. You are all encouraged to edit it as you see fit. If anybody has a huge problem with having this at all, please say so. -[[User:Frazzydee|Frazzydee|✍]] 02:10, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

PS: Please don't vote yet. We'll start voting as soon as we've agreed on a format for referencing. -[[User:Frazzydee|Frazzydee|✍]] 02:11, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Show/hide button for footnotes

Personally, I think that Sj's idea of having a show/hide button for footnotes is brilliant! If we don't have a feature request for this one, I think one should be made. This will stop most of the whining about footnotes messing up the page, and annoying the reader...especially if it is set to "hide" by default (AFAIK, the majority of people don't care about or check references). If this is put in, there should be a preferences setting for it being set to "show" or "hide" by default, and it should be in the sidebar too. -[[User:Frazzydee|Frazzydee|✍]] 05:10, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Abbreviated references

Just in case anyone missed it hidden inside my vote, I came up with a simple idea for cleaning up a large number of footnotes referring to the same reference called Abbreviated references and was hoping to get some feedback. The idea is that a short abbreviation is associated with each reference, and each footnote links to the appropriate references, as in [[#ABBR|ABBR]], pg.52. See a demonstration here. Deco 03:52, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Since many ref.s are online, and book/etc. ref.s are often used in sucession, can't we just use ibid. and wikipedia's built in linking feature (Poo, 1)? -[[User:Frazzydee|Frazzydee|✍]] 23:04, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

This has some problems. I use it when I'm in a hurry and I only plan on citing it once, but if the URL is long it causes clutter, and, more importantly, if the page is taken down, you have to idea what the page was called, where to look for a mirror, or how to contact the author, because you didn't retain that information. Deco 08:04, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Brag list?

Is there a brag/example list of thoroughly referenced articles? I recently wrote a decent one I'd like to advertise (SL (complexity)), and some kind of list for this would be great. Deco 08:06, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Let's get this moving

Ok, so far we've done pretty much nothing. Let's change that. I'll be putting up a biweekly special article later on today. When we need to cite an internet reference, let's just follow Wikipedia:Cite your sources Wikipedia:Footnotes and provide a normal external link^[1].

Also, please put in this text in the summary box for advertising (yes, I copied the idea ;)):

[[Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check|Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world]]

Have a better idea for the summary box? Feel free to suggest another one...mine isn't that great ;) -[[User:Frazzydee|Frazzydee|✍]] 23:42, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC) (edited 00:16, 23 Nov 2004)

Oh, and let's just do proposal 1...we really shouldn't deviate too much from proper referencing style. Wikipedia:Footnotes (part of the manual of style) suggests that external links are put in if the purpose is to direct the reader to an outside source. If we're citing from the internet, then I see no reason to force the reader to jump around.

Also, with normal footnotes^1 if one footnote is added at the beginning, then all the footnotes that follow must be updated manually. If we use external links, they are numbered automatically. We're trying to embark on a very difficult task here- we don't need to make things any harder than they already are. -[[User:Frazzydee|Frazzydee|✍]] 00:16, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Sorry for being late with the biweekly special article. Something came up yesterday, so I'll be posting one today. I invite everybody to take a look at (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, a featured article candidate. In my opinion, the referencing is generally done beautifully. The reader doesn't have to jump around, but if they want, they can easily find the information they need. I think that this is pretty much the way we should do it, except our footnotes should be ^superscript. IMO we should also cite properly (APA), but if you don't have time, improper citing is better than no citing! Another member will probably be willing to fix it for you if you leave a note on their talk page. Online sources should be cited like this. -[[User:Frazzydee|Frazzydee|✍]] 22:22, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Tooltips

When I actually started to try referencing, I quickly found that, being an encyclopedia, every single sentence needed to be referenced. Obviously, this was a HUGE pain. If we can get tooltips in the main CSS file (no highlighting please. Looks messy), then that would really help keep things under control. For now, I'm not sure if this is acceptable, but I'm using subsections in the ==References== section to keep things organized, and not have footnotes littering the page. -[[User:Frazzydee|Frazzydee|✍]] 23:20, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Related pages

You might be interested in a couple of related pages: Wikipedia:Forum for Encyclopedic Standards and Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team.

The forum is a place where active Wikipedia editors committed to writing quality articles can "meet" and promote encyclopedic and scholarly standards.

The goal of the editorial team is collaborate essentially to find, screen, develop or maintain (or all of those) articles appropriate for a paper or "release" version of Wikipedia.

Both include discussion or work on references. Maybe we should coordinate somehow. Maurreen 15:33, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The root of the problem

I find this and related projects to be the single most important thing to the long term success of Wikipedia. It is more or less been demonstrated that people will contribute material. But of course, that is not nearly good enough to sway the critics, proper referencing is the only thing that can do that. That said, adding references after the fact is much more difficult than getting them upfront when researching and writing articles. But I think there is a systematic problem in Wikipedia where most editors are not aware of how important it is to use good sources when writing articles. Most of the introductory explanatory material seems to support the idea that it is fine just to write whatever people know. That is all well and good, but not nearly as good as doing good research first and then writing. If we attack the root of the problem, our work will be much easier. We need to work on making sure all introductory material for editors exposes them to the importance of good references. I've done some, but I need other's help to make sure we do it right. Currently the Wikipedia:Check your facts article is an example of a really bad one on the topic. The whole manual of style more or less lacks coverage of the issue. The newcomer's welcome pages could also use at least some exposure to this idea. Thanks, let me know what you think. - Taxman 23:46, Dec 2, 2004 (UTC)

I think you are completely correct. I think most contributors copy the standards they see in other articles. People try very hard to maintain a NPOV because we make a big issue about it; but because they don't see reference sections on most articles they don't add them themselves. Considering this project I think the focus on software solutions for footnoting or referencing specific points requires a developer to effect, and is acting as a distraction from the need to create reference sub-sections in articles detailing which books and articles contributed to the wikipedia article. Clearing up the featured articles would seem the perfect place to start, as that is the way you spread best practise.:ChrisG 17:26, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Next 'Biweekly Special Article'

I don't personally know of any way to get reliable references for Viktor Yushchenko, so I propose that the next article to work on is Leonardo da Vinci. It should be easy to find references for, and we can have a discussion about what are considered the best and most reliable references to use. That should help provide some momentum for this project as it is something we can be very successful at. - Taxman 16:01, Dec 4, 2004 (UTC)

Great suggestion. It is now December 6, and I have replaced Viktor Yushchenko with Leonardo da Vinci. There were no other suggestions, and I feel that you've found an ideal article to reference, thanks! -[[User:Frazzydee|Frazzydee|✍]] 00:11, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

References namespace

I have posted a proposal on VP for a references namespace. Please have a look and comment. Fredrik | talk 06:23, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Fixed link. Excellent idea. — Jeandré, 2004-12-14t17:04z

Physics-style References

If it is alright for the Feynman article^Fey64a , I propose to use physics-style reference ID's, such as Fey64a for Feynman 1964 ref a. etc. Then I can just paste in the superscript part into the text. Once the footnotes are stable, it is a mechanical process to renumber them in series.

Example Footnote^Fey64a

Fey64a:example:Ancheta Wis 02:18, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Format

Wikipedia:Cite sources gives examples like the following:

• The Big Open-source Advocacy Homepage (http://www.opensource.org/halloween/halloween1.php). Retrieved Aug. 5, 2003.
• Blair, Eric Arthur (Aug. 29, 1949).

However the Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) says explicitly:

• Incorrect date formats
  • What not to do:

Do not use numbers to express a month, except in full ISO 8601 format, which always includes the year. Always express a month as a whole word (e.g. "February") to avoid ambiguity.

Why does the citation format differ, should it and why isn't it mentioned in the Manual of Style? Also why are the dates in the examples not linked following the Manual of Style:

• Dates
  • Dates should be wikified so that each reader sees the dates formatted according to their own preference.

There was a question on the village pump about this. Rmhermen 05:00, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)

Hello! I am back from my absence, but I have time to help here if people need help. Just tell me what to do, is Frazzley's idea of a weekly article started going full speed ahead? I feel like doing some research if someone has formatted the article into factoids :). I think once we get started it will start going quick, its just that no one wants to be the first to start editing up the articles :P --ShaunMacPherson 02:17, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Larry Sanger's Criticisms

A letter i submitted to the Tech and Wikipedia mailing lists about Larry Sanger's Article:

Larry Sanger believes that the solution to make Wikipedia more credible are with experts. You can see a good article descriping his criticisms here posted on Jan 3, 2004.

I think the easiest way to make Wikipedia more credible is with a Fact and Reference Project, which the community has been developing over a period of more than a few months now: .

The thing holding this project back, and ultimately Wikipedia from sheading the skin of being 'noncredible' is the lack of intelligent foot/end notes. A way to format an article with autonumbering endnotes for crossreferencing is lacking. I am sure with this feature programmed in this project can be on its way to cross referencing all facts on Wikipedia. You can see some examples offoot/endnote formatting template here. JesseW has put much effort into trying to create a formating guide here and there is another guide here. An example of a footnoteformatting is here.

How credible will Wikipedia be if each fact is crossreferenced with 5, 10, 20 external sources like academic journals, encyclopedias, books? Very.

Let use this as a nexus area for discussing ways to make Wikipedia more credible, and with programming in smart end/footnotes for bettter referencing of facts. --ShaunMacPherson 04:39, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Larry Sanger NEVER provided a reference for anything. He relied on his expertise in philosophy while editing. If contradictory or alternative references were provided by others he brushed them aside. That said, we all need to provide references for our edits and other assertions, include those which maintain that something should not be included in an article. Fred Bauder 13:47, Jan 4, 2005 (UTC)

Proposal Wikicite

What follows is a short draft proposal for an extension to wikisource called wikicite. Wikicite would, in effect, be a card catalog on line.

Project: Wikicite

Outline

The Wikicite project would be to create a card catlog on line, with an entry for each book, and for each article available. Since the scope of articles is so large, books alone would be sufficient. Each page would contain a canonical citation format, and a section for a summary of the book, and for annotations on the book. This would make each page somewhat similar to the pages on Amazon.com or bn.com, except, of course, the objective would not be to tease enough to get people to buy the book, but tell enough so that people understand the book its contents and over time, its general level of credibility with the community that it is a part of.

One key part of wikicite would be to create for each entry a simple macro that could be referenced by a short amount of text, so {{wikicite:Blogging America}} would expand out to O'Brien, Barbara Blogging America William, James & Co. 2004 - or whatever format is selected for citations. There would be an auto link to Blogging America, in the wikicite project and to Barbara O'Brien in wikipedia, and to William, James & Co and 2004 - thus the entire reference appears live. {{wikifoot:Blogging}} would provide a footnote citation, also creating an anchor tag, and {{wikinote}} a number that would link to the footnote using that same anchor tag. This will make creating specific citations in the text a rapid process, and one which editors can do as they recognize or edit other people's articles.

This is part of wikisource because a wiki source is, if you think about it, merely the other side of a card catalog link, as texts are made available for Wiki's use, the text would be linked to from wikicite as well.

The initial pass could be programatic - simply creating an entry by default for each book, and a long form of the title citation. Editors by moving the page, or creating redirects, could create aliases for use in the {{}}.

Use of includes would allow a canonical copy of the book information to be across multiple "cards", so a first edition would be included down on subsequent editions. The need for editions is important because of page number differences. We can't dictate which edition an editor has, we can make sure we have a citation for it.

Purpose

The purpose is to make citation of sources, both in a bibliography, or within the text, easy, rapid, editable and live. It goes beyond current citation systems because the card catalog, and perhaps the item itself, is "live". The card catalog can also note the credibility of the cited source. The same process that makes people write articles will make them want to write reviews - getting their POV out, increasing knowledge and so on. Authors would have every reason to write contributions to their wikicite entry, because it would often be one of the first links that would show up in a search of it.

The tools for entries would also have other advantages - "what links here" would give a list of wikipedia articles that cite a particular source.

Resources

1. Program to take an external feed of books and create entries. Space, servers, system administration time, mySQL overhead.
2. Macros to support citation in bibliography and footnoting from each entry. This is relatively small.
3. Developing a wikicite community. Outreach to libraries, since this would provide them with a valuable resources. Can be piggybacked on the current communities and the "WP 1.0" drive.
4. Wikiciting current articles - no small task!

Summary

In essence the objective would be to create a publically available wikicatalog of publications, books first, and then journal articles. These resources would be made available to editors in wikiprojects in a way which is live media, and thus leapfrog current citation abilities on dead media. This catalog, like wiki-entries themselves, could be used, the way people now often link book titles to amazon or bn pages. It could, if desired, be made into a revenue stream, by getting an amazon/powells/bn number for wikicite, linking to the edition in question on the relevant book seller and therefore getting a share of the revenue, which could then be used to defray the costs of wikicite itself, and perhaps, if successful, contribute to wiki's general operating budget.

Stirling Newberry 16:40, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Are you aware the [[Category:Sources]] has 6155 entries (Thanks Eric Zachte for the database query) in it already? And there are probably other books, journal articles etc that haven't been appropriately tagged. Which raises the issue of where something like wikicite should exist. Personally I think it should be in a seperate namespace within Wikipedia, we don't want to splinter the project further. :ChrisG 13:58, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

According to Books in Print there are over 5 million available books, audio books and video titles available. 6155 entries is a drop in the bucket, manually maintained, and hard to use to create scholarly apparatus. In everyway an inadequeate solution. It has been suggested to set up a space after the model of images, which are, if you think about it, a kind of source, where the cards would be similar to the images information we have currently. Concerns about the administrative parcelling of duties are subsidiary to whether the project has merit. Stirling Newberry 14:17, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm not criticising this proposal, I'm in favour of it and have suggested something similiar above. I was just pointing out that work has already started on those reference sources which are considered encyclopediac, and you need to take that work into account in terms of this proposal.

Additionally 6155 entries might be insignificant with regard to 5 million books in print; but it is still a fair chunk of the 420000 plus English articles; and represents a far larger chunk of those reference sources which might be considered significant and influential. Creating articles for 'significant' non-fiction books is a far more achievable goal, and a rather important milestone. :ChrisG 17:12, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

wikcite project page Stirling Newberry 23:38, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Encouraging references and research

I have noticed the biggest problem with the lack of references in articles is that the general culture of Wikipedia is to write what you (think you) know instead of researching and collating other reliable sources. I am interested in other people's ideas for ways to encourage research by every Wikipedia editor. Currently multiple articles get nominated at WP:FAC almost daily that have no proper references and certainly few if any facts cited to sources. That got me to thinking, it should not be an editors first time hearing that they should reference their articles when their nomination gets shot down at FAC. Little if any of the introductory material for editors talks about the importance of research and citing reliable sources. I think the single most important thing we can do as part of this project would be to figure out how to make sure every introductory message an editor hears reinforces how important that is, and how to do it. Ideas on how to do that? - Taxman 11:10, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

There's been a recent discussion about this on the mailing list, and it showed that unfortunately many editors are suspicious of deeming some publications to be reputable or authoritative. There seems to be a "let the readers decide" attitude. I feel the Wikipedia:Cite sources page needs to be improved considerably, as it's currently quite confusing, and seems to suggest you can add references after the fact, as a sort of "further reading" checklist for the reader, rather than as a list of sources used by the author(s). I tried to edit it, but my edit was reverted, with one editor objecting that it would fundamentally change the Wikiipedia if we insisted that editors cite sources; I think he understood that I meant every single sentence has to be sourced, which of course it doesn't, but nevertheless editors should be prepared to cite a source for every claim they make if they are challenged; and should supply a reference for their key claims without waiting to be challenged. I also feel there should be a discussion about "original research" on the cite sources page, and vice versa, because I see these issues as inextricably linked, but other editors disagreed with me. I find that many editors don't fully understand what original research is, and also don't understand the difference between a primary and secondary source; and don't particularly want to be told, because they don't see that it matters. The philosophy of the wiki, many argue, is that editors can zoom in, make a few edits based on personal knowledge, and exit without fuss. It's going to be an uphill struggle adjusting that philosophy so that it becomes compatible with producing quality work. SlimVirgin 11:45, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

But I'm not talking in this instance about requiring references, just about what can we do to encourage a culture of research and at least considering using reliable sources. When we elevate to the game of discussing which sources are more reliable than others we are on an entirely different playing field than the current one where few people argue with reliable sources in hand. Of course it is hard to deem a source unreliable and not be POV. But then that would just take finding another source that does claim that. That won't be easy, but like I said, it is a much more valuable game. - Taxman 15:38, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

Template:Unreferenced

I have been adding Template:unreferenced to unreferenced articles. It has fallen afoul of WP:TFD - I would like to know if Fact and Reference Check collectively considers it a good template or a bad one. The current version (minus TFD header) is:

- and a link to Category:Articles which lack sources. - David Gerard 07:38, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I, for one, consider it useless and will vote to delete. My explanation will be there, not here. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:57, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

I like it and feel it's badly needed. SlimVirgin 10:20, Feb 1, 2005 (UTC)

I agree that it is useful, and should be kept. Please see my vote to 'Keep' on the WP:TFD page. --Neoconned 03:20, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think this template is useful, but it should be used sparingly and not across every unreferenced article. The utility comes in highlighting that particular articles that have higher exposure than others are reference-less. Unfortunately, there is not a has references but is only partially supported template, which is actually where many articles are at rather than being either totally devoid of references or completely supported by references. Courtland 23:01, 2005 Mar 1 (UTC)

Adding a follow-up note ... I just added this template to Lester Crawford which contains essentially two pieces of information, that Bush appointed him to be interim head of the FDA, and that he is interim head of the FDA. In the edit-note I said something like "this article only contains a couple of simple facts that should be easy to support with a reference(s)". Courtland 17:43, 2005 Mar 7 (UTC)

Examples done?

Has anyone done any examples of real articles that have been referenced yet? I want to help but I'm not sure what consensus we've arrived at yet :). If we actually reference a few real articles and people like it, then it will spread as more and more people see the referencing and start to join / reference themselves. --ShaunMacPherson 18:26, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I added the section == List of articles that have been referenced == on the main page because I wanted to see some articles that have been referenced. I don't think we have any yet :(. Could someone do one, even maybe 1/10 of one so we can get the formatting right? I will copy what you did and apply it to other articles. --ShaunMacPherson 18:58, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

OK, now I understand why you put this section on the Project. This is a reasonable idea, to present examples of referencing and fact checking for general consumption. I would suggest, though, that a subpage be set aside for presentation and discussion of examples in order to work out a consensus regarding mechanics of referencing. I think, however, that there is enough referencing content to add that at this point the mechanics used are secondary to the reality of adding references. This was alluded to in the Footnoting effort by there not being a drive to winnow the footnoting styles down to one at this point.

My feeling is that a couple of "good examples" on the Project page itself would the tip of the iceberg with respect to the examples we might want to discuss, which is why I suggest the subpage as a specific discussion area. Courtland 22:56, 2005 Mar 1 (UTC)

Go vote for Featured Article removal

If you are concerned by the lack of references in Wikipedia articles, one forum for expressing that concern is the Wikipedia:Featured article removal candidates page. Many of the candidates have been nominated because they lack any references. Your vote is needed in order to ensure that Wikipedia featured articles adhere to acceptable referencing standards. Go vote! --Neoconned 15:36, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I moved this from the main page because I felt it was more appropriate here, and the project page was getting too cluttered. -Frazzydee|✍ 04:33, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

moved from main project page

What about that is "auto" ? --Alterego 01:32, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)

If you add new references in the middle of the article and a corresponding footnotes at the end, all the other numbers following get automatically updated. :-) With older systems, you had to change all the later numbers yourself. Mozzerati 08:09, 2005 Feb 26 (UTC)

With normal footnotes, you specify the number (eg. ^1). Here's the problem: if some time down the road I've found a book that verifies a fact near the beginning that was previously unverified, I have to go down and change all the other footnotes so the consequential order isn't broken (so I must change 2 to 3, 3 to 4, etc.). This can be a real pain. Autonumbering footnotes avoids this. -Frazzydee|✍ 18:19, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Whoops! Didn't see the other message because it was missing the colon in front :$ -Frazzydee|✍ 21:41, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

also moved

This looks to me to have the best potential of anything I've seen so far. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:04, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)