Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 22:39, 21 June 2009

It is not my intent to participate excessively in community; I edit articles for their own sake. I'm not going to be a part of a community that sanctions nationalistic attacks.

Misplaced Pages:Templates for deletion/Log/2008 November 6#Template:User en-gb-5

Welcome

<<already welcomed>>

That Vercingetorix thing

You reverted my edit. Fair enough, but if you feel that way about it, do you want to add the references for all of those items in a more proper format? I mean, the information is right there. (I would do it myself, but I don't feel the need. You, I take it, do, or at least feel that it'd be the proper way to do it. And I really don't mean this in a bitchy "well, you fix the article then!" kind ofa way, I hasten to add.) -- Captain Disdain (talk) 11:52, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

There is no such thing as a "self-sourcing" article; that's tantamount to original research. What is needed is sources that document those appearances. Mintrick (talk) 15:40, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

But, uh, those sources are the appearances. Misplaced Pages:Citing sources says, "A citation is a line of text that uniquely identifies a source. It allows a reader to find the source and verify that it supports material in Misplaced Pages." Now, if the material in Misplaced Pages says, for example, that James Bond appears in Casino Royale, all the reader needs to do to verify that information is to watch the film itself. That doesn't really need any other citation, because that fact is self-contained and inarguable. In fact, no other source could really be as credible as the movie itself: that has zero margin of error. And it's nothing at all like original research -- or if it is, any source we use as a reference is going to be tantamount to original research, because then we might as well need another source that confirms the source we use really says that. (And yes, in some cases the works in question may be so obscure that they don't qualify as sources, because no one can be expected to find them. But that's definitely not the case here.)

I realize that this logic doesn't apply to most articles, but that's because most articles include information that goes beyond this level of straightforward summary of a published work's content. Our articles typically discuss things like critical reception, or the work's production, and other related matters, for example. But with Vercingetorix in popular culture, that's not an issue. And this doesn't necessarily apply to everything in the article, of course, as specific points may still need citing -- a sentence about the film Vercingétorix: la légende du druide roi, "It was neither a critical nor a box-office success, but did far better in Europe than the United States of America", for example, is a statement in dire need of a citation. (I missed that the first time around, when I removed the tag -- otherwise I would've inserted a specific {{fact}} tag there, while I was at it.)

An argument can be made that the sources should be cited in a specific way, and that may be fair enough. (An argument can also be made that the article itself isn't very good or useful, for that matter, but that's kind of beside the point for the purposes of this discussion.) But the information itself is solid. We do this kind of stuff all the time: when we refer to laws or decrees, for example, we don't need another source that confirms that the information contained in the law or decree itself is true. That's not original research, that's just a way to direct the reader to the source. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 19:09, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

WP:NOR has very strict limits on how primary sources can be used, which I think that article violates. As such, it still needs secondary references. Mintrick (talk) 20:41, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, actually, I'm glad you brought up WP:NOR, because I'm not sure I would've had the good sense to look into that for help here! This kind of thing is what WP:NOR refers to as a primary source, and I quote "Primary sources that have been reliably published (for example, by a university press or mainstream newspaper) may be used in Misplaced Pages, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation. Without a secondary source, a primary source may be used only to make descriptive claims, the accuracy of which is verifiable by a reasonable, educated person without specialist knowledge. For example, an article about a novel may cite passages from the novel to describe the plot, but any interpretation of those passages needs a secondary source. Do not make analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims about information found in a primary source." (Emphasis mine.) So it's perfectly okay to say that Vercingetorix appears in certain works and let those works themselves be the source for that information. We can't go much beyond that, but there isn't any need to go beyond that for a list like this. Now, again, whether those sources should be expressed in another format is another thing, but based on this, I'd say that generally speaking, we don't need secondary or tertiary sources for the items on that list. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 19:37, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

xkcd cartoon

M, if you want to remove the xkcd as a ref or link, you should make your case on the article talk page, instead of removing what has had a pretty good consensus among a number of otherwise pretty quarrelsome editors. Dicklyon (talk) 05:02, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

EN-GB-5

I have reverted your recent edits to Template:User_en-gb-5

You must respect the consensus in the AFD discussion of this template. Apparently, you were so dissatisfied with the outcome that you decided to leave Misplaced Pages as you have stated on your talk page. Feel free to do so. Do not commit vandalism. Cheers --Law Lord (talk) 22:39, 21 June 2009 (UTC)