Re: Wikipedia:Verifiability - Mailing lists as sources

Some semi-random musings on the subject.

>And in its place we constantly
>face tags, tags, and more tags. Right now, you virtually can't write
>a single word without having to add at least five references that
>prove it, otherwise you'll promptly get a tag.
I don't see what's bad about *tags*. It's simply to say "we need a reference
for this". I don't think their decision to put the threshold of inclusion at
verifiability is stupid at all, because otherwise, who's to tell someone
isn't just making things up? The types of subjects for which verifiable
sorces do not exist aren't likely to get a large amount of specialist
attention weeding out nonsense, either.

Deletionism, tho... A possible easy solution that comes to mind would be an
"extended hang-on" tag, meaning "don't straight-on delete, someone is out
there looking for references (or locating existing ones)". Maybe there is
one, even? I haven't looked.

IMO the gist of the issue is more about the "no original reserch" clause.
Strictly in the context of an encyclopedia this again makes sense, but
Wikipedia, however, for a long time now hasn't been treated by Jane Q.
Surfer as a "reliable encyclopedia on estabilish'd information" as much as
"Jimbo's big bag of trivia", like it or not. My preference would be to
either a) see original reserch allowed on fields for which no academic or
compareable reserch exists (and with clear guidelines for how to, not
"anything goes"), one huge example being pop culture. Or, b) to basically
split everything in Wikipedia between, I dunno, Citizendium and
Everything^2. Currently its stated goals and de_facto direction are just in
too much of a collision. "Free encyclopedia that everyone can edit" clearly
quickly turns into "indiscriminate collection of information" (which
Wikipedia explictely however purports to not be), and at that stage you ARE
going to get a backslash of the admins wishing to limit the "anyone" part
when their experiment isn't working.

As far as conlanging goes, I agree with Mark that very very few conlangs
would need an encyclopedia article. There's the problem, tho, that excess
external links are discouraged out of fear of Advertizing, and so it can
sometimes be difficult to find any in-depth resorces. This always seemed
like throing the baby out with the bathwater, to me...

Also:

>After all, encyclopædias (which they are trying to be) aren't supposed
>to be sources to reference, but rather something lists basic
>information about a topic and includes lists of "real" references,
>which would be the ones you cite instead.
I don't think I've ever seen any references in a DTF encyclopedia.

John Vertical