Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check/Archive 4

message: I have made a new proposed project.  WikiProject Reader aims to group people reading through sources to add references throughout Wikipedia.   It's complementary to Fact and Reference Check.   You could help by 
* suggesting sources (e.g. ones you find when fact checking an article)
* joining and reading sources.
Hopefully we will be able to help Fact and Reference Check by leaving sources in place which you can use when you get round to fact checking the articles that have been improved by Wikiproject Reader.  Anybody who likes the idea and wants to help please add your name to the project page.  Mozzerati 15:38, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  New proposal [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Reader|WikiProject Reader]] 

message: A scientific peer review has been started and we're looking for Wikipedians who are members of the scientific academic community to run for the board. If you want to give it a shot come over and post a little about yourself. New nominations are being accepted until the 00:00 on the 17th March.
The project aims to combine existing peer review mechanisms (Wikipedia peer review, featured article candidate discussion, article assessment, &c.) which focus on compliance to manual of style and referencing policy with a more conventional peer review by members of the scientific academic community. It is hoped that this will raise science-based articles to their highest possible standards. Article quality and factual validity is now Wikipedia's most important goal. Having as many errors as Britannica is not good–we must raise our standards above this. --Oldak Quill 18:12, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia:Scientific peer review 

message: I'm seriously thinking about starting a Wikipedia:WikiProject Footnotes or something along those lines.  When it comes to footnotes and references the articles on Wikipedia are an absolute mess and need serious cleaning up.  It doesn't help that the old  and  system was hard to use and very prone to falling out of date with further edits, to the point that there are isolated refs or notes that don't match anything or the numbers have gotten out of order.  The Cite.php is much better and to that means I have created the Ref converter, which works to convert properly formatted old-style refs and notes to the new Cite.php.  Of course, a lot of the old-style refs and notes were done incorrectly, and so lots of human hands are needed.  The ultimate goal would be to zero out the What links here list of , , , , , and , as well as eliminating inline external links.  Obviously that's a hard goal to achieve, so we would probably be better suited to go for education efforts, i.e., educate users on how to properly use <ref> and  so that, over time, new references and footnotes are added correctly and ones in the old style are gradually converted.  Who's with me?  (please echo to my talk page) --Cyde Weys 01:40, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've been doing a fair amount of this by hand (although I've been especially focused on articles with plain blind HTML links), and I've been trying to "educate" everyone whose path I cross in footnoting matters. I notice that there are a few articles that mix two sets of notes by different mechanisms, one for citations and the other for clarification of details; I'm not sure what would be best to do with those. - Jmabel | Talk 00:48, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

text: A significant part of my work here lately has been in reformatting references, but not in doing ref/note → cite.php conversion.  I'd support any WikiProject that aims to improve the use of existing footnote technologies, but not presently one to the exclusion of the other.  Such a large effort at this time could be very disruptive. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:54, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, Clyde seems to be chasing his white whale of converting everything to m:Cite.php, no matter how inappopriate that is for a particular article.  It's quite a destructive endeavor, to my mind; made worse by a robot that aids in the destruction.  No matter how many times he repeats the largely false claim that m:Cite.php is so clearly better, there are many cases where Harvard refernces are much more appropriate.  I guess this is getting close to a user conduct RfC, unfortunately. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 06:23, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sigh.  Yes.  This is tiresome, when there is still so many uncontroversial uses of   to be converted, arguing with people who prefer Harvard references is a throughly foolish endevor, IMO.  Having one system would be nice, but that's still a long way off.  Until then, fighting with good editors is not a good use of anyone's time. JesseW, the juggling janitor 08:47, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

text: I plan to continue using the  system as it seems substantially easier, but I see not problem with people converting them to whatever system they want; the two are capable of coexisting on the project. Christopher Parham (talk) 05:07, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And I plan to continue using the cite.php system ... but not in a manner that replaces existing  implementations, but rather on articles that have not been treated with either of the two systems.  The unfortunate part of the proposal here is the notion that effort should at this juncture be expended in switching between the two systems rather than in getting one or the other system in place for articles that could benefit from it.  At some later date, if the consensus to do a full switch is achieved, proper formatting in either system will be invaluable to robotic transformation between them. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:52, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  References formatting 

message: See Talk:Warsaw Uprising (1794). An early 20th century Russian source has been found which has some controversial information (for example is using the term massacre and such). No other references (English or modern) can be found to collaborate some of the facts (and the POV) of this source. Yet the author defends it 'because it is a source 'and there is no contrary source saying 'it was not a massacre' (all other sources call it a battle...).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 20:39, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comments on reliability of early 20th century source appreciated 

message: I often patrol the new articles, and I find myself constantly adding template:verify.  Is there a robot capable of checking articles and tagging them "verify" if there are no ref tags, ISBN tags, or web links?  If not, could someone please create one?  Or, is there a policy objection to having such a robot? Thanks! --M@rēino 22:07, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  A robot proposal -- please comment 

message: I have opened Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Cyde to try to resolve some ongoing problems with conversions of articles in other reference formats to m:Cite.php, where contrary to consensus.  I welcome your input. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 23:18, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request for Comments 

message: The tool (semi-bot) that I have been working on, Citation Tool has reached a usable and useful state, I believe.  The purpose of this tool is several fold, but the main (and implemented) goal is the detection and guided correction of errors in m:Cite.php markup.
As of this exact moment, the tool does the correct diagnosis of two types of errors.  By later today, it should also be able to propose specific modified text that corrects the errors (sometimes requiring operator decisions).  The web page for the tool also links back to the edit page for a given corrected article.  Notice that any modification made based on the advice of Citation Tool is made under the user's own WP username.  The two types of problems currently identified are:
# Multiple <ref name=...> tags with the same name but different contents (hence hiding all but the first in the rendered page).
# Empty <ref name=...> tags that occur before ones with content.  Same basic problem, but this is especially easy to inadvertantly create if articles are reorganized.
These type of errors seem to occur quite frequently "in the wild".
The proposed changes made by Citation Tool do not change the referencing style or technology used on a page (currently: plans are underway to aid insertion of Harvard references as an adjunct to footnotes, where a mixed style is appropriate).  So as far as I can see, the changes proposed by the tool should be non-controversial.  The only possible issue I can see is that editors might disagree about whether a currently hidden footnote content is or is not better than the one that had been visible; but that's a pretty regular editorial/content issue, per article. 
Well... the other issue is that the tool might be buggy, since it hasn't been banged on by anyone other than me yet.  That's why I'd appreciate some other people using it, and paying attention to results.  If the diagnosis or proposed solution seems to be wrong for certain pages, that matter needs to be identified and fixed. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 21:41, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Please help test [[User:CitationTool|Citation Tool]] 

message: I assume everybody knows the Isuzu Experiment. 
:This link to The Isuzu Experiment is broken - that page doesn't exist and the site reports "no posts matched your criteria." The same link exists in the main article and lots of others on Wikipedia, making the fact that this link is now broken a demonstration of something in and of itself. Chester320 07:37, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: WP:POINT Shinobu 01:35, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

text: As for the finding "factually incorrect material", I'm doing that - one fact at a time, at Talk:Warren Beatty/References.  Feel free to join in, or better, pick another good (with a small G) article and do the same thing. Come on in, the water's fine! JesseW, the juggling janitor 07:49, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Check Reliability 

message: Have a look at this edit. A basic and easily checkable fact in the Prime_Minister_of_the_United_Kingdom article (the salary) was not updated. This is the sort of thing that justifiably gives Wikipedia a bad reputation. What is the point of saying that our articles can be more up-to-date than others, when no-one checks to see if they are up-to-date? This case was all the worse for being in an article that was linked from the Main Page. At several places around Wikipedia I asked "Can processes be put in place to stop this happening again?" - and from the Main Page talk I was directed here. So my question is how this project would have prevented this error from remaining in the article? Carcharoth 00:31, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My own opinion is that there is almost no process that can be put in place that generally guarantees rapid recognition that changes in the world have made an article outdated. One thing that does help in cases where the next change will be at a predictable date is to do exactly what was done there in the edit you mark: note when the data will become outdated. Other than that, "volatile" data (populations, political office currently held by a living person, etc.) should generally include an "as of" (e.g. "as of 2006" or even "as of July 2006"), which can be periodically updated. But still. Any time we say someone is a record-holder, their record could be surpassed. Any time we describe the current constitution of a country, they could amend or replace it. Any time we talk about the number of people who speak a language or live in a country, it could change. I think most of us try to write in a way that will age (you don't see a lot of "eight years ago" or "in the last few months"), and more of it might be better, but things will always slip through the cracks here or in any other reference work. - 19:22, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  An example of non-existent fact-checking 

message: So, i started working on what looked to be the current "biweekly special article" (Martin Luther King, Jr.) then realized it was not at all ready for fact checking. Seems that it has been listed since 2004 and was just an example. Is anything happening with this project?EricR 02:12, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is this project active? 

message: Paul Kobasa and I are coordinating a discussion session on fact-checking on Wikipedia, at 4pm on Friday: 
* Validation on Wikipedia: How do I know this article is accurate
* ‘Just the facts, ma’am (or sir)’: Accuracy and impartiality in crafting an encyclopedia article
I thought folks from this project might be interested in attending.  My background is work with Wikipedia 1.0, while Paul Kobasa is editor-in-chief at World Book.  I am keen for us develop a complete system to deal with this old chestnut!  I will suggest a system of expert review teams, based at appropriate WikiProjects, working to develop validated versions of articles that have had every individual fact & reference checked.  These validated versions would be available via an extra tab, and (unlike the main article) they would not be editable other than for updating by the review team.  These ideas will simply start off the discussion, and I hope that the discussion will close with a consensus and some clear action points.  I'm hoping that some of the Wikimedia software people will be there, with ideas on how to solve the validation problem.  I will put up a Wikipedia page to continue the discussion, and I hope people from this project can help with that work.  If you have any specific proposals you'd like to see me raise, please mention them here.  Hope to see you there, or at least helping us online! Walkerma 22:30, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikimania discussion on fact-checking 

message: Sniper. I think with a good list of sources added into this article, it would be good enough to nominate for featured article status. I'll start working on this as well, if this project is active I'd appreciate a hand as well. --Daniel Olsen 20:11, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Biweekly Special Article suggestion 

message: See Wikipedia talk:Stable versions#Testing --Francis Schonken 10:58, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Test case for [[Wikipedia:Stable versions]] 

message: I was going to add a comment to the talk page of Zaadz, saying "Blogs are not suitable as references" but I couldn't find this policy written down. Is this a policy, and if so, can we make it clear in pages such as Wikipedia:Citing sources? --Singkong2005 talk 06:19, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: See: WP:Reliable sources#Self-published sources. EricR 06:47, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks - I've left a note saying I was concerned about the extensive use of blogs as sources, and gave that link. --Singkong2005 talk 09:09, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  When blogs are cited