Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check/Archive 2

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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. -Frazzydee|✍ 00:13, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  A technique for tooltips 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Proposals for formatting 

message: 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. -Frazzydee|✍ 00:10, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Voting section 

message: 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. -Frazzydee|✍ 02:10, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: PS: Please don't vote yet.  We'll start voting as soon as we've agreed on a format for referencing. -Frazzydee|✍ 02:11, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article of the week/month or Biweekly special article 

message: 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. -Frazzydee|✍ 05:10, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Show/hide button for footnotes 

message: 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, pg.52. See a demonstration here. Deco 03:52, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: 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)? -Frazzydee|✍ 23:04, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Abbreviated references 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Brag list? 

message: 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.
-Frazzydee|✍ 23:20, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tooltips 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Related pages 

message: 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)
thread_title:  The root of the problem 

message: 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! -Frazzydee|✍ 00:11, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Next 'Biweekly Special Article' 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Physics-style References 

message: Fey64a:example:Ancheta Wis 02:18, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Example Footnote<sup id="fn_1_back">[[#fn_1|Fey64a]]</sup>

message: 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)
thread_title:  Format 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Larry Sanger's Criticisms 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Go vote for Featured Article removal 

message: 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)
replies: text: Whoops! Didn't see the other message because it was missing the colon in front :$ -Frazzydee|✍ 21:41, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  moved from main project page