Jump to content

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check/Archive 1

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
< Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Gurch (talk | contribs) at 14:17, 13 June 2006 ({{talkarchive}}). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3→Archive 5

There were many ideas in the Wikipedia channel about this topic, I saveed the log and will extract the basis of the ideas here later (and will attribute them as well). --ShaunMacPherson 14:01, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

  • It is a good idea to comment about the accuracy of facts - each and every fact. But can we exclude facts on mere suspicion of being inaccurate based on our limited checking of accuracy?
That is an interesting point, a new proceedure may have to be thought out if there is a disagreement about facts or Wikipedia evolves to the point where possibily some material would be taken out because it comes from a less reputable source.
I think though that Wikipedians currently do, and likely will in the future, a good job about weighing the factual statements in the articles. Facts or opinions that are not widely held or mainstream are usually directly attributed to an individual (e.g. Scientist X has stated that Aliens have visited Earth). It would still be factual to indicate that a certain person holds a certain viewpoint or belief - All that will happen is now we can actually track down their viewpoint and factually know that they had indeed said it. --ShaunMacPherson 15:00, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  • This is a very ambitious task needless to say. But it is desirable. What is desirable is some software support for this. If it is possible, we could broaden the scope to question even the neutrality of sentences. --Hemanshu 14:08, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Implications for Wikipedia

There have been a few comments that people are worried that this project may interrupt how Wikipedia currently operates. I don't think that fact checking need necessarily interrupt Wikipedia, what it will seem to do is is open up a new avenue of opportunity to people who are not verbal or literary, but have excellent research and fact finding skills. Those that just want to write can do so, and those who want to verify that the autoreferencing code is working properly, and that new facts are numbered and checked have their part to play as well. (Nothing precludes people from doing both too :) ). --ShaunMacPherson 17:03, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Examples

I'll be working on forming a more concrete example by actually formatting a current Wikipedia article, and making its reference page. Of course I'll have to do it manually since the autoreferencing code has not yet been developed, but hopefully it will be a better preview then the Jack example, on the main page, as to how such fact and referencing might be implemented. --ShaunMacPherson 17:03, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Tools

Some ideas:

  • Some kind of auto-footnote-numbering feature would be nice (along the lines of the example (-#)?), for which a MediaWiki modification would have to be made, I guess....
  • Templates for whichever authoritative sources we choose to cite on a regular basis. Then we could put a proper bibliographic reference in the footnote without having to retype or copy and paste it manually every time....

-Sewing - talk 18:26, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I like the idea, but since people are constantly adding to articles, we would have to tag checked articles to show when they were last checked. Danny 18:29, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Good point. Anyhow, the idea is that the MediaWiki mod would take each (-#) or whatever and produce something like this for a finished product... -Sewing - talk 18:35, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Interesting method, but only one reference could be associated with each fact with your superscript way. This way, example 2 from the main page I made yesterday Example 2 maybe a better method as you can verify each fact unlimited times with mulitiple sources. Edit the page to look at my ad hoc tabs, less ugly ones will be made hopefully :).
It would also be useful if you could make visible on the actual article the sections being quoted, but you'd need a script to do that. --ShaunMacPherson 18:15, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I guess it would be a 2-step process: first insert the (-#)'s, submit the page, then go back and add the actual references??? So on the first pass, all the software would do is create a "References" section heading, automatically number each (-#) sequentially, and create a corresponding section heading. Better yet would be to use something more compact than a separate section heading for each footnote, however.... -Sewing - talk 18:41, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Regarding Danny's concern, perhaps the WikiMedia utility would also add a timestamp to the article for when the references were last edited (by doing a diff on the previous version). I added an example to my sample Pacific Ocean article. -Sewing - talk 19:11, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Here's the feature request for footnotes on MediaZilla: http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=192 - There's also some discussion on m:Footnotes. --Kurt Jansson 22:12, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've just went to that bug section. This is getting very complicated, can anyone explain the process which proposed additions to the Wikimedia code (what Wikipedia runs on) are put forward? I've added a comment there directing people to the project page, hopefully they see the benefit of crossrefercing articles :). --ShaunMacPherson 14:00, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

More tools..

  • Some nice reports that may be useful in this project can be found here, thanks to Topbanana

--Quinobi 07:04, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Example?

Instead of the trivial hypothetical "blue pants" example, could someone take on a real, non-trivial article as an example of how this might work in practice? I suggest starting with something that is reasonably stable, not terribly controversial, and not previously chock full of references. Maybe mayonnaise? -- Jmabel 19:36, Sep 1, 2004 (UTC)

Hi! I did an example the day before yesterday but it may not be that visible on the main page so this is a link to it: example 2. I find it looks a little gawdy, perhaps when the coding requotes the statement, it takes out wikiformatting? Feel free to copy the text underneath and lable it example 3 etc. if you have an improvement. --ShaunMacPherson 18:10, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Hmm, I think I prefer with the footnotes more. Mind you, I still think it would look better on a subpage. I know we're trying to get rid of those, but for some articles- especially the larger ones- having the references in a section on the page would be quite annoying, since there would be so many. I prefer the footnotes because they're easier to follow. With footnotes, if I want to make sure that spiders really do have eight legs, I just click on the footnote. With this, I have to scroll down and look for the statement. Well, this is talk:, so that's just my opinion- feel free to argue! -[[User:Frazzydee|Frazzydee|✍]] 18:14, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Potential problems and complexities

I can see a few possible difficulties with fact-checking in this fashion. Many of the problems mentioned on m:Footnotes apply. Assuming every fact is to be referenced in some way, I think it will be important to have the capability to tag a large block of text with a single reference; for instance, the very short stub (found by random-page browsing) Stubbekøbing contains this text:

  • Stubbekøbing is a municipality in south Denmark, in the county of Storstrøm. The municipality covers an area of 156 km?, and has a total population of 6,836.

Even this short stub contains many facts:

  • Stubbekøbing is a municipality
  • It is in south Denmark
  • It is in the county of Storstrøm (which by implication is also in south Denmark)
  • It covers 156 square km
  • Its population is 6,836

Referencing each fact separately, especially for long articles, would be a monumental task. Delimiting which fact(s) are being referenced seems like the only reliable way to do it. However, whenever a new fact is inserted inside a delimited chunk, new delimiters must be specified and/or a new reference added (increasing the complexity of our already complex wikicode markup).

This leads into another problem - tracking changes in the article, and ensuring that references are not wrongly associated with unrelated facts (or vice versa). Aside from re-checking articles after each addition or alteration, I can't think of an obvious way to prevent this from causing problems.

One possible way to eliminate the need for most references is to use references only for facts that may be unintuitive, not widely known, under dispute, or otherwise contentious. Of course, this opens a whole new can of POV worms: how to decide when a fact is incontrovertible enough to not require a reference.

Any facts with a URL as a reference may quickly become outdated, especially if the reference is a news article that may not be archived for more than a few weeks. Obviously, additional information such as author, publication media and date would be strongly encouraged.

I like the concepts discussed on m:Footnotes, and think they would go a long way to solving the lingering question of accountability, aside from the uglification of wikicode caused by them. A simple list of references alone would give us more credibility in many cases. I can think of no publication that references every significant fact, so we would likely be one of the first to attempt it.

Some brainstorms:

  • Use a form of meta-wikicode for all references. The meta-wikicode would not normally be visible when editing the article (much in the same way that formatting marks are not visible in a word processor unless their visibility is enabled by the user). This would allow the wikicode to maintain its current level of complexity for most editing tasks; users doing fact-referencing could view the meta-wikicode for the purpose of inserting references, delimiting facts, adding additional comments, etc. Whether these references/footnotes are displayed within the article text (which could be disruptive to readers not interested in seeing tons of links to all the references) could be a user option "show/hide references"; toggling display could pretty easily be implemented with CSS. Undoubtedly this would require significant implementation changes, but this seems to me the best of all possible worlds.
  • Use some variant of the diff system that we use to view article changes; we can already deduce what user or IP address contributed exactly what bits of text to any article. A new input box could be added to the editing page for contributors to document their sources as they add or remove information; those references could be included in the article as footnotes, or as meta-markup such as that mentioned above.
  • Use a separate references page for every article, which would contain offsets or numerical references into the article text, i.e. (Paragraph 3 sentence 5: Joebob Jones' article "Foo" in the Weekly World News, December 17, 2001), or just a reference that correlates with an identifier inserted into the article wikicode. This could be tricky to implement in a manner flexible enough to adapt to ongoing changes in the article, but might also avoid some additional complexity in the article's wikicode.

Overall this seems like a very worthy endeavour. I think it could work if we give it enough thought. -- Wapcaplet 01:13, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You present an extremely important point there- if we reference every fact in an article, it could get pretty messy- even with footnotes- it'll litter the page. Can we limit one footnote per sentence, and put two references in one footnote? Obviously, we're going to have to use some common sense. If something is widely known, it need not be referenced (i.e. the humans have two legs example). -[[User:Frazzydee|Frazzydee|✍]] 21:35, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I am uneasy about the practicability of this idea. To work we would need to define the form the references are to be given, and ensure everyone sticks to them, eg Joe Bloggs, Clog Dancing for Dummies, Complexity Press, (2004), or Bloggs, Joe ---- . There is no consistency about how references are already written. If references are footnoted, means must be made to automatically update the numbering if new edits and references are made. In the New Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, to which I am a contributor, footnotes are not given, but a block of references is given at the end, including printed sources, portraits, sound recordings, motion pictures etc, and I suggest we adopt the same principle. To fact check and reference every statement in a paper is a big addition to the work of editors, and could well impact on the length of articles submitted due to the amount of extra work needed to do it comprehensively. Apwoolrich 06:31, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Some of the facts to be referenced in the spider article are actually matters of definition. Are we going to give citations for statements like, "Humans have two legs"? Sometimes we will need citations for shady areas, e.g., the idea of "races" of various non-human organisms in biology was subjected to a long debate and part of the reason for that debate was that not all participants realized that different specialties in biology habitually use the term in different ways, avoid its use, etc. The places where references are likely to be most useful are matters of objective fact that are not well known, e.g., that spider "silk" is a protein structure. People who find that matter interesting would benefit from references that give more information than would be appropriate in a general article on spiders. But all of the information that any well informed student of the subject will agree with, the number of legs, the lack of wings, etc., etc. is found in compact form in standard reference books such as B. J. Caston's How to Know the Spiders. P0M 20:26, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

A proposed strategy

Very little effective fact checking will be achieved on our massive body of information merely by arbitrarily starting somewhere, breaking things down to atomic facts, and checking them. As in software quality assurance, we need to spend our resources in such a manner as to get the most "bang for the buck". I would suggest that once we've decided what we will consider as acceptable verification (or falsification) of a factual statement (and that will not be a simple matter: sources can contradict each other), there are several reasonable strategies to choose appropriate facts to check.

The key principles here are (1) nothing should be immune from fact-checking but (2) we should try to direct a disproportionately large amount of resources to areas we think are most likely to contain falsehoods.

Here's what I'd propose:

  1. At least 5% of fact-checking time devoted to thorough checking of articles chosen truly at random, e.g. using the "random page" feature.
  2. At least 10% of fact-checking time devoted to thorough checking of known controversial articles. This is not limited to the articles that are overtly labelled as controversial, but would include topics related to, for example:
  3. At least 5% of fact-checking time devoted to random assays of articles chosen truly at random: after using the "random page" feature (or equivalent) use some comparably random method of picking three facts from the article to try to verify. If those verify, move on; if not, see the remark below about neighborhoods.
  4. At least 10% of fact-checking time devoted to checker-driven assays of articles chosen truly at random: after using the "random page" feature (or equivalent) the checker should look for the claims in the article that (subjectively) seem most likely to be false. If the first three or four verify, move on; if not, see the remark below about neighborhoods.
  5. At least 20% of fact-checking time should be dedicated to articles which one or another wikipedian (not necessarily one usually actively involved in this fact-checking project) has identified as "suspect". This might work somewhat like cleanup: anyone can put an article "in the hopper", but the people doing the work decide which articles actually to work on. Reasons to identify an article as suspect might include:
    • sources were cited but can't be found (e.g. a dead web link as a citation).
    • one or more factual errors already identified (and possibly corrected).
    • edits by people who have been known in the past to insert poorly researched (or outright false) information.
    • "It just smells wrong."
      Sorry to stick my ideas in the middle of your lest, but this is a good idea. Perhaps a new tag that is the equilivant of "Please check this, the facts seem unusual" :). --ShaunMacPherson 18:21, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
  6. At least 20% of fact-checking time should be dedicated to various neighborhoods of where false statements have been found: e.g. same article, same author, closely related topics, etc. Over time we will discover which of these "neighborhoods" is the most productive of further identified factual errors.

That leaves 30% of resources to be allocated more arbitrarily, e.g. by people just picking something they are interested in checking and going for it.

Obviously none of this is set in stone, and the percentages might change with time or other categories might be added: e.g. if we are trying to turn part of Wikipedia into a published book or CD-ROM, that would merit getting priority. -- Jmabel 06:39, Sep 2, 2004 (UTC)

Some have suggested that the featured articles should be checked before becoming featured articles, and past featured articles could be varified as well since they are the epitome of the best of Wikipedia.
It would also be useful to sign up some people with electronic encylopedias. I only have encarta, anyone know of other good ones we can do fact checking with? Perhaps we should create a list of sources we will use to keep track of the references? It would be useful if the coding could do this too. --ShaunMacPherson 18:21, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
As a strategy I suggest you adopt the 80-20 rule. Focus effort on the articles that are most controversial and do the fact checking there. That would give the project the most positive effect on Wikipedia and gain the most publicity and so potential helpers. Also, if this project is going to work it has to be shown to work on the most controversial articles. :ChrisG 20:18, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

As I point out above, there are too many separate factors here for a guideline as simple as 80-20. -- Jmabel 21:43, Sep 13, 2004 (UTC)

I think your overestimating the resources (i.e. interested parties) that are avaliable at the moment to support this project. You should start small and prove its worth. The strategy you suggest implies that you have a fairly sizeable group working on the project. : ChrisG 08:52, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Its hard to start crossreferencing without the approperate <<tabs>> in place to autogenerate the quoted facts to be referenced. We could go around putting in comment tabs around facts and copying the quote to the reference section created below the article but that would tend to ruin the article ;).
What we need is to get the techs interested, and I've already spoken to a few. --ShaunMacPherson 14:00, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I agree with jmabel's general plan, and add the m:Instruction creep article to the strategy discussion and project guidelines here. Quinobi 10:43, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

There's a related discussion going on here. You can see the entire thread by clicking on the subject line.--Eloquence*

I noticed that many people are getting very interested, and eager, to make Wikipedia a more authoritative source of information. I also have been on some of the mailing lists and there has been discussion about refereeing articles like the old Nupedia. If you see any discussion or comments about referencing, fact checking, foot notes, please leave a brief comment about this project. Hopefully it will be a nexus for developers and wikipedians to discuss how to make wikipedia a better and more authorative source of information. --ShaunMacPherson 13:57, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Generated Facts?

What about for fact that are not in the format needed. For example, say you have the date of birth of Napolean, and the year that he was exiled, and from those you get his age. Could the fact checking mechanism explain the math used to get the new fact? Jrincayc 01:32, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

You'd quote that, and then quote his age from a source I guess. --ShaunMacPherson 08:14, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)


How about this as a way forward?

I've been thinking about this problem with my back brain, and I've come up with this suggestion using existing features of MediaWiki.


Basically the idea is create a namespace for articles about primary source material. This namespace would record all sorts of information about the primary material, for example:

  • Title
  • Author(s)
  • Type (e.g. article, book, magazine, letter, white paper, newspaper, webpage)
  • ISBN(s)(Could be multiple if different additions)
  • Web address (External pages and especially Wikisource link if available)
  • Abstract
  • Wikipedia article if encyclopediac
  • Facts


The facts are added as sections within that article about the primary material. These facts can then be reused throughout multiple articles. If someone reads a primary article they can create and amend the related facts in one go, which is the natural way to discover and check facts. The talk page could be used to discuss any questionable facts. You reference the fact by linking to the article and the appropriate named section (for paper media the page number).

This namespace could be used for all sorts of primary material, e.g books, webpages, articles, magazines. I would imagine there would be different templates for each type of primary material. I think it quite likely that academics would be very interested in such a primary source namespace. Adding a Reference or Source namespace to Wikipedia would only require requesting it from the developers.

Possessing a seperate namespace for articles and referencing of primary source material has a number of advantages. It is far more sustainable, because the references will properly checked as a whole against the primary material. And providing the primary material is rigourously checked, it would be fairly trivial to check a wikipedia article for correct referencing to the articles in the Reference namespace. Clearly such a namespace with appropriate referencing would strengthen the academic credentials of Wikipedia.

Obviously the linking mechanism is a bit ugly and obtrusive still; but would be an easy change to the code. It would also be very useful if the wiki-ref links allowed internal Wikimedia links so that What links here would tell us which articles are referencing the facts, which would obviously be vital to check and update references.

In the future there would be a number of ways developers could create a list of footnotes within a Wikipedia article. The data being organised into sections could be manipulated in a number of ways or even moved to a proper database. This would mean that people could work on this project without fear of wasting their time. 

:ChrisG 21:28, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Excellent work. That is very close to the idea I had. In your version you click super script note and goto the reference. The problem with doing it this way though, with super scripts -> reference (instead of to the fact statement), is there can only be 1 reference per fact unless you have a string of superscripts for each sentence. With example 3, you can have multiple references for each fact. All that would need to be done is a redirect to the statement instead of the reference :o).
I like in example 4 how it automatically brings you to the statement in question. I wasn't able to do an example with it in #3 but now I think I can using your example. I also really like your idea of actually having a seperate page with the information seems very much superior, as it does not clutter the article. Plus having a seperate page like you suggested allows us to have our own discussion page on factual issues.
Looking at the code though there is a lot of junk in the edit view in example 4. Even with example 3 it looks very junky with tabs in the actual code. We need away to do clean <<brackets>> around fact statements, and have the ability to hide these brackets for people just editing the article and not doing fact checking, but have these brackets follow the text around. We really can't go forward much, I don't think, until a <<bracketing>> fact statements are coded into MediaWiki code. I have not heard from the tech people I spoke to so if you know anyone (Timwi, TimStarling, other coders) please encourage them to devote some time into coding a bracketing solution. The #1 criticism is always the authenticity / reliablity of the facts in Wikipedia so I think they should be focusing on this issue. --ShaunMacPherson 09:43, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I can see the advantage of having multiple references for one fact collected together. But I think that it is working back to front. Trying to keep multiple references to a single fact correct would be a nightmare to do as it would be dissassociated form the primary sources.

A fact relates to a specific primary source. It makes more sense to collect all the facts relating to a primary source attached to the article about the primary source, because it would combine the process of reviewing a primary source and noting down useful facts in one process. I'm sure somewhere on Wikipedia some other people were interested in starting a WikiReview project and so they would be interested. It would also mean that if a person reviewed a primary source properly, it would be suitable for use in multiple article, maximising the value of doing it. People looking for facts in articles would also have a seperate namespace they could search to look for suitable facts.

Obviously for controversial articles you would see people jumping between both namespaces, creating a fact checking primary articles and then adding references on the wikipedia article. But that is to the benefit of everyone; because the arguments about the facts can take place in the reference namespace, not the wikipedia article talk page. I think it would remove a lot of controversy. Clearly there is a lot of junk using this method; but the important thing is it works now, so you don't have to wait for developers to add features. In addition it would be quite easy to ask developers to clean the process up, by amending the [reference] syntax so we could use it also to refer to internal wikipedia links and automatically making them superscript. Developers like easy changes. Allowing referral to internal Wikipedia links would mean the 'What links here' would identify where a primary source was used to support an article allowing for easy fact checking.

I can understand your desire for a bracketing syntax and in the best of all worlds it would be the ideal solution. But it is a huge change to make in the code, and so you would need a committed to developer to work on it; and it would be a nightmare to do. It looks very simple when you bracket a specific phrase as a reference; but once people start editing the document you have a nightmare:

  • The update process would have to check if information has been amended within a bracket.
  • Flag this in some way
  • What if you want to create footnotes for different parts of a phrase, e.g. "<<<<Jesus>> Christ>> was <<born in <<Nazareth>>>>". How on earth to you make sense of fact that I want to create footnotes for Jesus the name, Jesus Christ the title, born in Nazareth and Nazareth.
    • Then what happens when someone edits it like this, "<<<<Jesus>> Christ>>, also called <<Jesus the <<Nazarene>>>> was <<born in <<Nazareth>>>>"?
  • If you try to hide the bracketing syntax from editors then thats another level of complexity, and you cause confusion about what editing to make.

It would be hard to find a developer interested in solving that, because it is so difficult. Whatever solution they come up would almost certainly not be liked by everyone. Its a complex requirement and the best way to build towards it is incrementally.

It is far simpler to add a reference after the fact you want to reference. People understand this from books; and many people will be careful with the references and indeed check them as they go. Fact checking proper should take place in the reference namespace.

From my point of view this project as its first priority needs its own namespace in order to start fact checking and reviewing of primary sources. Once that is set up, people writing articles will soon start referencing the reference namespace and creating articles about suitable primary sources. The method of linking to these references is secondary and a technological problem. 

:ChrisG 14:40, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Submit a proposal

I would really like to get started on this project, but I can't tell if there's a consensus for how to do so. Could everyone with an opinion summarize it in 50 words or less, or just add your name after someone else's summary if you agree with it totally? I'm probably going to do something with the music of the United States series using a user subpage to list cite facts. I'll start with music of the United States before 1900 with a reference page at the imaginatively titled User:TUF-KAT/music of the United States before 1900, if someone wants to see it. Tuf-Kat 02:41, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)

I think that project as currently proposed is ill-conceived and misunderstands what fact-checking is about. It is not about redundantly confirming the obvious. It is about verifying or refuting the reasonably questionable. -- Jmabel|Talk 18:50, Oct 13, 2004 (UTC)
Change the page if you think it can be worded better :o). I really was hoping more people would take an active role in fixing the project page up instead of leaving me to do it heh. Go crazy everyone and make it better, there is always the history if the members want to revert some changes.
What I think the project is about is fact checking all facts on Wikipedia, please put what you think it should be about.--ShaunMacPherson 04:06, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I've already explained my proposed approach above (#A proposed strategy). It is based on the principles of quality assurance. It looks like others here have a very different idea in mind. I think it's epistemologically flawed and I've said as much. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:00, Oct 15, 2004 (UTC)

The key principles here are (1) nothing should be immune from fact-checking but (2) we should try to direct a disproportionately large amount of resources to areas we think are most likely to contain falsehoods. (Quote from #A Proposed)

I agree with this completely. I guess there would be people who format the articles with footnotes, people who check facts, and people who respond directly to 'hot' topics with a lot of conflict, usually the same topics that contain a lot of falsehoods. I'd guess most of the time would be usefully spent in this 3rd catagory, on directing energy at areas that contain falsehoods, like you say.

None of this can be effectively done though until a useful way to do footnotes are incoroprated into mediawiki. I suggest a <<bracket approach>>, but I'd take anything :). --ShaunMacPherson 07:53, 15 Oct 2004 (UTC)

But, also, merely finding an independent citation does not "prove" the truth of a statement. It's one thing to get articles well-referenced (and I'm all for that, and I probably do about as much in that direction as anyone on the English-language Wikipedia), but it's another to actually be able to say they are anything more than referenced: that requires expertise on the subject matter. See, for an interesting example of how tricky this can be, the notes in Armenian (people) about the references for the population statistics. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:44, Oct 15, 2004 (UTC)

That is why I think the fact checking, or rather gathering of references to cite, should take place in a reference namespace. That way the argument about whether a reference is accurate is argued about in the article about the source. Arguing about reference material in Wikipedia is currently too far away from the original source material; and it may happen across multiple articles to no advantage to anyone. If we have a reference namespace the argument about the source material is carried out in one place. Any facts or references derived from that namespace could be used in multiple articles and it would have a clear audit trail. :ChrisG 14:13, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Yes, that could be very useful. In fact, I could imagine a very useful set of discussions on the reliability or otherwise of various sources that do not necessarily merit articles of their own. -- Jmabel | Talk 19:58, Oct 16, 2004 (UTC)

As I see it the reference namespace would be for academic studies, books and any other primary material. Of course, it wouldn't have the source material, it would be articles set up in a structure format about the source material, e.g:

  • Title
  • Authors
  • Publication date
  • Publication details
  • Abstract
  • Useful references.

I would imagine different formats for different types of primary material. The talk page could be used to discuss any aspect of the article; but I would presume it would be most useful to discuss the subtleties of referencing and fact checking.

A very small percentage of this primary material would also be suitable encylopediac material, which would not be a repetition of the reference namespace, because it would be presented in a different less formal way.

I can see a crossover here with various other project ideas, Wikiversity, WikiResearch, WikiReview etc. So perhaps it wouldn't be a reference namespace; but instead its own Wiki with its rules; and probably higher academic standards. I would imagine such a Wiki could well be more appealing to academics than Wikipedia itself. This disadvantage of a seperate Wiki would be that 'What Links Here' would not tell you who was referencing the source material. :ChrisG 23:54, 17 Oct 2004 (UTC)

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 footnotes1 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)

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 articleFey64a , 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 FootnoteFey64a

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

Format

Wikipedia:Cite sources gives examples like the following:

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:

This article does not include its references or sources. You can help Wikipedia by adding references.

- 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)

New experiment: baseline revisions

I have a proposal called Wikipedia:Baseline revision. Basically the gist is that we find a revision of an article that is as accurate, neutral and well written as possible, with all facts referenced correctly. Details are in the article itself - however, currently this is going under review. At the time of writing, I was thinking that we can start off baseline experiment by creating a baseline subpage that hangs off the article. For instance, the Common Unix Printing System would have Common Unix Printing System/baseline where a baseline could be proposed. Anyway, I figured that this project would be a good place to announce this. I would very much appreciate suggestions, debate, and modifications to the experiment.

The nice thing, btw, with the thing I'm proposing, is that it doesn't actually impact or disrupt existing articles. It just adds a new subpage and it might be referenced at the top of the articles talk page. And even better: it's an experiment. If it doesn't work, then we can chuck it out as a failed experiment. That said, I hope it doesn't fail! - Ta bu shi da yu 08:10, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

  • Sounds like a reasonable idea. Thanks for posting it here. I've not read the proposal yet, but I'll say at the outset based on what you've said that I think a tagged revision which is persistant on the History page rather than a subpage might be better, but I need to think through that after reading the proposal. Courtland 13:23, 2005 Mar 3 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Baseline revision

I have started off our first attempt to find a baseline revision for Common Unix Printing System. The proposal is here and is locked in to stop vandals from editing the URL to the revision: Common Unix Printing System/Proposed baseline. See the talk page to see the objections and review for the proposed baseline revision. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:13, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Biweekly special article

Some of you might remember that a while back, we had something called the biweekly special article, where the team tried to work collaboratively to reference one article every two weeks.

It sounds good in theory, but the problem was that there weren't too many members, and many weren't active. Now that we have more members, I'd like to bring it back. If you think that this is a good idea, please put in your suggestions for next week's biweekly special article. Don't think it's a good idea? That's okay too, voice your opinions here. -Frazzydee|✍ 21:27, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Titan; Pope John Paul II Courtland 04:40, 2005 Mar 21 (UTC)

Revision at Wikipedia:Footnote3

I just noticed that they made a revision at Wikipedia:Footnote3. They're now using the {{ref}} and {{note}} templates.

I don't know about all of you, but I for one prefered {{an}} and {{anb}}. It's a bit confusing for me to remember which is the footnote number and which is the note itself, but more importantly, I don't like the little arrow.

I know how nitpicky this is going to sound, but I also don't like the fact that the two templates have such different names and that they're longer to type. 'an' and 'anb' are easy to remember because they're so short and similar (the one going back only has one letter extra).

Here's an example of what the new format looks like:

This is an example[2]

  1. ^ see?

Remember that we're not bound by any of the suggestions made there, and I don't see how it would be detrimental to any articles if we continue using the old system. -Frazzydee|✍ 01:17, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hi, This is the author of Wikipedia:Footnote3 (though it's wikitext, so you can edit anyway if you want). I also prefered an/anb, that's why I chose them, but even I have to admit it's not totally clear to a random editor what they mean. The aim here is that we should have one recommendation rather than two; There was a competing proposal with identical functionality using the templates ref & endnote and people using that liked it better because they preferred the longer/clearer names. ref & note was a compromise which both I and the proposer of ref/endnote could agree on.
If you don't like the current suggestion, please do try to get a consensus in discussion on Wikipedia talk:Footnote3. It will be much better if we can come with one coherent suggestion for footnotes to the rest of the community rather than several different ones. The value of being able to present a single front with the ref/endnote people is more than the value of one character a command for me. Especially when I see that they do have a bit of a point. Mozzerati 07:10, 2005 Apr 2 (UTC)
I think that random editors also wouldn't know how to use {{ref}} and {{note}} without reading the guide at Wikipedia:Footnote3. I really liked an and anb a lot better than the new ones, and I'm really glad that you made them. Besides, shouldn't Template:Ref and Template:Note just redirect to Template:An and Template:Anb? It doesn't really matter which one redirects to which, since it'll all look the same in the end. They seem almost identical, except they're incompatible with each other. Redirecting would solve this, and I'm going to do that. If you disagree, then don't hesitate to revert me. -Frazzydee|✍ 17:46, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

WikiBib

I do lots of formatting external links to MLA format so I converted a tool I use to produce wiki syntax for basic MLA formatting. It covers about 90% of cases for me. I call it WikiBib. Let me know suggestions. I'm no ace with javascript but maybe i can do it. --Alterego 03:46, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

Great job! I love it, and (if it's not already) I think it should be put on the main project page. I have a couple suggestions for improvement:
  1. Should support book references
  2. Copyright year should default to current year (so it should already be in the box)
  3. Date of access should default to current date.
Thanks for creating that. -Frazzydee|✍ 15:06, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Browsers don't allow designers to fill in those fields by default due to security issues. I thought of a way to get the current date in there automatically (which I will implement tonight), however I am hesitant to do copyright year. I find less than half of sites have updated their copyright status to 2005, and many have none at all. In those cases I first try archive.org to see the last time they updated their content, and failing that I use the whois database to find out the last time they updated their domain. It's important to try to find out the last time they updated their content because, just like a book, after a certain number of years the information will be released into the public domain. It is also the only indicator of the freshness of the data we are providing the user. Will implement other ideas tonight --Alterego 21:07, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)
ok what do you think about it now? --Alterego 08:15, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)
I really love it, thanks again for making this :). But there is one slight problem...when I was citing a news reference, there was no author specified, and it was just listed as by the BBC. Since wikibib uses the templates, it required the author. Are you sure it's not better for wikibib to just generate the MLA without using the template? The MLA format isn't likely to change drasticly, and even if it does, using the old 'version' should be fine. I think the templates might sometimes be a bit stiff, in that they won't work if (for one reason or another) some of the fields don't apply. -Frazzydee|✍ 18:12, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Databases

If you have need for a citation available in this list of 400 databases just leave a message here, on my talk page, or e-mail me and i'd be happy to research it for you. Please do a bit of the footwork by identifying which databases would be optimal to try --Alterego 07:54, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Fact_and_Reference_Check/Archive_1&oldid=58394096"