Regarding source-citation density: Oliver Hauss on source-citations offers suggestions indicative of one view of the goals of an online general encyclopedia of authoritative articles.
I do not view source-citations as honorific tokens but as honorific asides, nor as credit-indicating tokens but as credit-indicating asides. I view source-citations as allowing interested knowledge seekers to expand their knowledge by reading further on the topic that has the source-citation. The mass of opportunity CZ can offer with source-citations increases directly with the number of source-citations. A greater number of source-citations provides greater opportunity for knowledge seekers to gain knowledge CZ cannot provide, namely that gained from reading the books or documents cited as sources. In addition to enhancing the quality of CZby providing a portal to knowledge beyond itselfsource-citations permit public assessment of CZ's objectiveness and accuracy of description of the facts, which feedback CZ needs for considerations of self-improvement. The density of source-citations for CZ articles would differ depending on author-related and topic-related factors. Authors may differ on the extent they feel the need to indicate the sources of their information, for a variety of reasons. If an author can cover a topic drawing from a few sources, she requires few source-citations. If she does not have a few comprehensive sources to draw from, she must synthesize and therefore will require more than a few source-citations to allow readers the opportunity to add to or modify the synthesis, and facilitate their doing so. In that context, I would encourage CZ to include in its architecture facilities that make it easy for authors to deal with citing sources, so their attention could focus on writing with coherence and grace. Anthony.Sebastian _________________________ Anthony Sebastian, MD [EMAIL PROTECTED] [preferred email address] -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Oliver Hauss Sent: Tuesday, November 07, 2006 8:06 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Citizendium-l] Several issues vis-a-vis WP and design A list of 50+ references is ok for a scientific article. In an encyclopedic work, I think that it should be enough to reference the key take-home points. Unlike an academic publication, it is not necessary -barring original research- to clearly demonstrate what is the author's work and what has been found by others: The author is merely paraphrasing the work of others. Likewise, it is not necessary, like in a review article, to attribute the honor of the key findings in a field to the right people. We're hopefully unlikely to have incidents of "You didn't acknowledge MY MILESTONE publication in YOUR review, henceforth, you don't exist for me!" I think that massive reference lists for articles e.g. in popular culture can sometimes result from challenges to the article: Inflationary use of crystal ball accusations being countered with inflationary referencing. We don't need to reference that water is wet and that its formular is H2O, and when we can assume that the average person accessing an article about a movie will already know that the director's first name is Steven and his last name happens to be Spielberg, we don't need to reference that either, in my eyes. But I've seen myself search three independent scientific publications to provide a foundation of a single point in a science-fiction article as not being complete humbug -however, I didn't include them as a reference but mentioned them on the talk page. Oliver > -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- > Von: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Im Auftrag > von Derek Lyons > Gesendet: Montag, 6. November 2006 23:41 > An: Ori Redler > Cc: [email protected] > Betreff: Re: [Citizendium-l] Several issues vis-a-vis WP and design > > > On 11/6/06, Ori Redler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >In WP, and also here, those are very much in vogue, probably as part > of the effort to show >that WP (or CZ) is a credible source > of information. The problem is that footnotes tend to >hinder > readability. I think we need to find a way to make notes less > prominent (although I'm >not sure exactly how). > > Footnoting and bibliographies can also be taken *too* far. I > forget which one, but I recently came across an article on a > semi-popular topic that had *57 footnotes* for a three screen > long article. (Then the bibliography covered another two > screens - all of the cites other websites, and over half of > them 404ed.) > > D. > _______________________________________________ > Citizendium-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.purdue.edu/mailman/listinfo/citi> zendium-l > _______________________________________________ Citizendium-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.purdue.edu/mailman/listinfo/citizendium-l _______________________________________________ Citizendium-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.purdue.edu/mailman/listinfo/citizendium-l
