Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check/Archive 1

message: 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)
thread_title:  Implications for Wikipedia 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Examples 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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! -Frazzydee|✍ 18:14, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Example?

message: 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)
replies: text: 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). -Frazzydee|✍ 21:35, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Potential problems and complexities 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Related discussion 

message: 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)
replies: text: You'd quote that, and then quote his age from a source I guess.  --ShaunMacPherson 08:14, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Generated Facts? 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title: Submit a proposal