Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check/Archive 3

message: 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)
thread_title:  New experiment: baseline revisions 

message: 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)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Baseline revision]] 

message: After two weeks, the last Biweekly Special Article, Titan (moon), was a huge success! At the end of the two-week period, we referenced a total of 22 facts! Click here to see how it improved.
Thank you all for your enthusiastic support.  I hope that we have this kind of participation for the next biweekly special article.  Happy referencing! -Frazzydee|✍ 17:58, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Congratulations! 

message: I'm having a dispute about sourcing material on Talk:Zoroastrianism#NPOV? I don't think so. Can I get someone to back me up on this? It seems that the following text is not considered POV:
:The timing of Zoroaster's life is significant for understanding the development of Judeo-Christian beliefs. Should it be before 1300 BC (prior to Akhenaten), then Zoroaster would be the earliest monotheist known in any religion. Even a later date could make Zoroaster a template for Biblical figures who introduce monotheism over henotheism. Traditional Jews and Christians typically seek to place Zoroaster's life at as late a date as possible, so as to avoid the conclusion that much of the theology and morality of the non-Torah parts of the Old Testament derive from Zoroastrianism, the ideas having flowed into Judaism during the Babylonian captivity which happened shortly after 600 BC. Even the first commandment reflects the henotheistic nature of early Judaism. "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me" implictly accepts the existance of other gods."
"Traditional Jews and Christians typically seek to place Zoroaster's life at as late a date as possible, so as to avoid the conclusion that much of the theology and morality of the non-Torah parts of the Old Testament derive from Zoroastrianism, the ideas having flowed into Judaism during the Babylonian captivity which happened shortly after 600 BC." is clearly the POV of the author, and as such is unsourced. - Ta bu shi da yu 03:08, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help! 

message: As one of the people who's been actively editing George W. Bush, I'm happy to see that article selected for reference checking.  Because it's so controversial, though, you'll probably find that it already has more careful referencing than most articles.
If people from the project are looking at George W. Bush, one way you could help the article would be to respond to a current RfC.  We've had an ongoing dispute about the subject of substance abuse.  It's all laid out for you, in a format agreed to by both sides, at Talk:George W. Bush#Presentation of substance abuse issues.  More input would be welcome. JamesMLane 06:55, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bush article 

message: What if I referenced an article with online links and the links 'die' after a period of time and no other references online?  =Nichalp «Talk»= 08:12, July 12, 2005 (UTC)
:You can try to find an archived copy at http://web.archive.org/collections/web.html but if it's not there I think it's better to leave the URL, with a note that explains it's now gone. — Jeandré, 2005-07-12t19:20z
::If there are no other mirrors online, then there's not much you can do about it (unless you have a copy, in which case you can quote it where necessary).  This is why it's important to reference properly- so users know when it was there.  WikiBib is very useful for this.  Unfortunately, there really isn't much besides that you can do. -Frazzydee|✍ 21:34, 22 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Expired links 

message: I'd like to have the article on cats fact-checked. I think it's only a step away from being an FA, but it lacks references. Toothpaste 10:01, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requests 

message: Question: what is the status of article tagging, such as the use of  to populate :Category:Articles lacking sources?  Should it be mentioned on the project page? --Viriditas  | Talk 09:34, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Added. --Beland 03:28, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Articles which lack sources 

message: The FRC collaboration seems to have died, but if anyone enjoys properly formatting existing references, Kambojas needs a lot of work in that regard. -- Beland 03:16, 26 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kambojas 

message: Hello - I have two articles I could really use some help on.  
#In the process of working on Hurricane Katrina, I came across the term Atlantic Basin.  I've seen that term defined in different ways in different sources, but I can't find a source I would consider definitive as to what bodies or water are/are-not included in its definition. 
##The Atlantic basin is defined by the NHC as a region of tropical cyclone formation. — jdorje (talk) 09:20, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Two Requests for Help 

message: The matter of violations of "fair use" was brought up in the talk-space for User:Jimbo Wales (see User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#Fair_Use_Images) and I mentioned there that I would mention the discussion here for further comment.  Do you think that spawning a child WikiProject specifically aimed at encouraging citation of images would be a good thing?  After some work on the matter had been done here to work out some of the kinks, I think. Courtland 04:09, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Having been the user who caused the discussion and got yelled at by Jimbo, I believe that it is becoming necessary. --Titoxd 05:21, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Images that lack citation meta-data / attribution 

message: I know there is plenty to do at Wikipedia, but
User:Danny has requested that we get wikibooks:Wikijunior Solar System finished up in 3 weeks!
There is a lot to do.  Fact checking is only a part of it, but a big part.
This book is going to be printed and distributed to children.  
If you are reading this note, we could use your help! Thanks!
--SV Resolution(Talk) 14:31, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request for Help at WikiJunior 

message: Comments requested at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Inline links discouraged in favor of more complete sources. (SEWilco 08:03, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inline links discouraged in favor of more complete sources 

message: I was adding references to an article and had an entire section under a section head that was from the same source.  I was unsure of where to put the ref template so added it at the end of the section header.  Does anyone have any comments or suggestions on how to footnote an entire section?
The article I was working on was U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry and the section is Chairmen.
Epolk 21:11, 14 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I have to say, that doesn't look very good to me. Can someone please make another suggestion? -- Jmabel | Talk 22:32, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Usually a footnote goes at the end of the relevant material, which suggests simply putting a footnote at the end of the section.  Or one could have at the bottom "(from SomeSource)" and footnote that.  Or use  to link "(from SomeSource)" to the source.  The next editor gets to figure out how to dereference anything they insert in the section. :-)  (SEWilco 00:15, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Referencing for an entire section 

message: I think since the project page was written Google Print has been playing with its functionality. The links on our project page no longer work. The URL's at GP now seem different to those deconstructed. You are also now required to be logged in to a Google account to browse books which I assume is to make sure you can;t work-around the page limits. Can someone who's able to analyse the new URLs see what can be done with them and rewrite our project-page section accordingly please? I suppose there might be something to consider in whether Wikipedia wants to link references to something that requires you to register too. Lots of our users will find themselves clicking through to a log-in screen, presumably. That wouldn't be good.  --bodnotbod 18:49, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Problems with our info on Google Print 

message: Please weigh in at this discussion about whether we should recommend our readers to use other encyclopedias as sources or not. — mark ✎ 10:41, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reliable sources - using other encyclopedias as sources for our own articles 

message: Right now I find this page very cluttered, and nowhere near as simple or organised as WikiProject Stub sorting. Should we start reorganising to make it easier and clearer as to how Wikipedians can help reference our articles? Johnleemk | Talk 10:41, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reorganisation 

message: A straw poll is being taken based on whether using only URLs in an article is an acceptable style for citing sources instead of having more detailed citations.  See Talk:Global cooling#SEWilco.2C disruptive reverts.2C and citations.  (SEWilco 23:41, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Vsmith is presenting a misleading view of the situation, where the original article had dead URL-only links with numbered format, being replaced with standard Wikipedia:Footnote numbered links to citations.  See the discussion in Talk:Global cooling, and if you wish see Vsmith's alternative whose errors and weaknesses are described in Talk:Kyoto Protocol.  While he complains of consensus, Vsmith's edit is even more dramatic a style change than numbered links.  (SEWilco 05:57, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: SEWilco has been edit warring for weeks in order to try to force editors to use footnotes. He has tried to delete or reduce information about Harvard referencing and embedded links from Wikipedia:Cite sources and from Wikipedia:Manual of style, and has made several misleading edits about those styles. The fact is that embedded links and Harvard referencing are both perfectly acceptable for Wikipedia, and in fact much more popular than footnotes. WP:CITE has no preference between the three styles, except that the style used by the first major contributor should be adhered to if no agreement for change can be reached between the current editors on any given page. SlimVirgin (talk) 06:26, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Are URL-only links an acceptable citation style? 

message: An RfC has been opened recently concerning an editor who has spread fringe theories and original research over a wide array of articles (>100) making clever use of cross- and self-referencing, thus making his contributions looking reliably sourced and verifiable to editors who assume good faith. Finding a solution to this problem is of eminent importance to Wikipedia's future reliability and verifiability. Read more at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Roylee and weigh in at Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Roylee. — mark ✎ 14:47, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Important RfC: please weigh in 

message: It would be nice if there was a standard way of identifying facts, so that they can be easily checked and cited. I don't know if there is a standard way to do this, but I was thinking along the lines of:
:Elephants are large mammals, known to fly around in the Himalaya.
Then the talk page could include the facts on the standard to-do-lists as long as they're not checked:
:Check facts and provide citations:
:*FACT 0
:*FACT 1
Identifiers instead of numbers? Maybe, this is just a starting point. When they are checked and cited the fact references could be included in the citation:
:A treatise on zoology, part I, ...
Perhaps there is also some room for templating common situations here. This is just a small idea to start the brainstorming, but I think a system like this will help keep track of facts that need to be checked. This is especially important for articles that currently have no cited sources and whose facts are relatively hard to check. When a fact is wrong, it could be removed from the article. A link to the last revision of the article containing the wrong fact could be put on a list of errors (on the talk page) with discussion, so that it's easier to spot if someone puts it back in, for example due to the fact being very well known (but, unfortenately, wrong). Shinobu 20:45, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fact identifying and checking method 

message: You may be interested in Wikipedia talk:Verifiability#Citation format poll: Format of citations and WP:V  examples, and WP:FN. (SEWilco 03:49, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  WP:V citations 

message: The article on Christmas needs a lot of work in terms of fact-checking. It was supposed to be the featured article on the 25th.  I'm not sure if it still is supposed to be. Theshibboleth 21:20, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help with Christmas article 

message: Very often, when I've added specific fact references to an well-fleshed out article, I provide the direct quote from the source that I cite, following the citation.  I have been asked to start a discussion on this, and I have done so on Wikipedia:Citing sources.  Please comment there.  Thanks! JesseW, the juggling janitor 09:22, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Direct quotes in references 

message: A policy change has been proposed which is relevant to this project.  See Wikipedia:Verifiability/temp.  (SEWilco 04:46, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Policy change proposal: Wikipedia:Verifiability/temp 

message: m:Wikicite is a project dedicated to implementing many of the mechanisms and processes recommended by the Fact and Reference Check Project.  A new design of this system is currently underway, and hopefully implementation can be completed this year.  Before that happens, though, we need feedback from the community regarding the project's useability and functionality.  Please take time to read the project proposal on Meta and then post your comments here regarding any improvements or missing features.  Thanks.
:Jleybov 23:53, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikicite Project (take 2) 

message: An article may rely in different places on multiple independent sections or chapters of a single large work like a book. Since our goal is to be as specific as possible, it really isn't very useful to just cite the entire book. Do we have any kind of standard style for citing different parts of a single work? I've seen various things, but I would propose something like this:
* John Doe. Stuff. Stuff Press. 1992.
: Chapter 5: Craziness about stuff, pp.54–78
: Section 8.2: Green stuff, pp.105–112
 Ima Dude. A Work Cited Only Once. Harlton Press. 2003.
What do you all think? Deco 04:08, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Largely agreed, except for the naming of the sections. The list of references goes in References; the individual notes go in Notes. See Athénée Palace for a good example. - Jmabel | Talk 22:48, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Multiple uses of a single source 

message: Hey guys, I just cleaned up Yehudah Arazi.  It definitely needs some sources.  I've commented out the stuff that contradicts other pages.  Could someone give me a hand finding some decent references for the article?  Thanks.  -- Jonel | Speak 04:44, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yehudah Arazi 

message: Hello!  This page's shortcut (WP:FC) presently is linked from a handful of pages.  I would like to reassign it to Wikipedia:Featured content (which I plan to develop).  WP:FRC could be the new shortcut for this page.  Are there any objections?  —David Levy 13:33, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Shortcut 

message: Can we simply blacklist websites known to be highly POV / propagandist? From my experience, I can tell that it would really help save a lot of time. deeptrivia (talk) 00:16, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Blatantly POV websites will be recognized as such, I think, though a list would do no harm. I think it is more important to list website that seem initially good, but are far less good than they seem. Andries 00:19, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  My particular concern (that motivated me to write this) is with http://www.dalitstan.org/ and http://www.ambedkar.org, both notorious websites, being used as sources on wikipedia. Some people just want to believe blatant POV has the Truth. Simply telling the editor that your source is untrustable will produce ego hurts, edit- and revert-wars, and all kinds of tensions. Is there a nice way to go about it, that retains goodwill? Other such sites include . deeptrivia (talk) 00:32, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Those website seem suspicious to me, but I do not how to maintain the list and we should make criteria for inclusion and exclusion, otherwise people will list include all websites that they do not like (I can personally think of some) But I dunno such criteria. Andries 00:44, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I had a closer look at dalitstan.org and I think this is a propaganda website. Andries 00:47, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yeah, I know, it's easier said than done. All I can think of is a nomination followed by voting/consensus building process, which obviously has some drawbacks. Hopefully we could work out something. deeptrivia (talk) 01:21, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Sorry, but I think you will find that most controversial WP articles are sourced from advocacy pieces in pop publications or personal websites or blogs. If they were sourced from peer-reviewed academic papers they would not be controversial. Fourtildas 05:29, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Can you give two or three example of this (citing heavily from advocacy pieces)? I assume that you don't mean citing the advocacy articles for the opinions of their writers, but citing basic facts from advocacy articles in a way that has created of fueled controversy, right? - Jmabel | Talk 05:37, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Propaganda websites as sources