Talk: How to Use Sources and References

A couple of points

• The researcher in me quails at the statement that 'not everything needs to be sourced'. Really? Why not? It feels like a failure of futureproofing to me - sure, everyone might know that the SO is the head of the DMS - but when the Board decides twenty years from now to kill him off, a writer thirty years after that won't know. So why not source it? It's not like the pixels cost anything!

• Actually, this is kind of related... I don't like sources. Specifically, because when a page becomes large enough to need references instead, it means a lot of extra work for the person adding them - why not just reference as we go? They're also vastly less useful; if an article states that, say, Dafydd Illian has a magic ring - well, how do I figure out which of his many missions and side stories that's in? (In this case, 'because there's an article about it', but it's just an example). Far better to have a little number in blue brackets that tells me exactly where it is.

Don't get me wrong - sources are better than nothing at all (remember Fix-It? Or Cold, for that matter)... but references are far better. In the case of my Great Readthrough, I may well start a page with just one source, but find more later on - and I'll swim in the Sea of Núrnen before I'll make extra work for myself by sourcing it first, and then going back to figure out which source is which later. Huinesoron (talk) 18:01, June 3, 2014 (UTC)

The question for me is finding the balance between "enough information" and "so much information I can barely read the content through all those blue things." I also hate redundancy in an article. If the whole page comes from a small number of stories, what's the point in marking up every individual statement with the same two or three tags over and over when you can just put two or three links at the bottom? How do you cite something like a statement about a character's personality when it comes from the spin-off taken as a whole?

In the example of Dafydd's ring, I think the problem is best solved by writing something like "Dafydd picked up the Ring of Sairalindë in his third mission, 'Daughter of Desire'" in the article. Source cited, redundant link at the bottom of the page avoided.

As for "not everything needs sourcing," Wikipedia offers this guideline: "Wikipedia's Verifiability policy requires inline citations for any material challenged or likely to be challenged, and for all quotations, anywhere in article space" (emphasis added). They go on to add that adding citations is always a good idea, since anything unsourced may be open to challenge... but I'm pretty comfortable asserting that no one is going to challenge the identity of the Head of the DMS in the foreseeable future. If that changes 20 years from now, the PPCers of 20 years from now can worry about it, and since they'll have brought the work of updating everything on themselves by mucking with the canon, I won't feel bad for them. {; P

But seriously, if you're going to try to change something as foundational as the DMS, you're asking for a lot of work in bringing the wiki up to speed, sources or no sources. In the meantime, it would be a lot of work to go through and cite for everything we consider to be obvious—the position of the SO, the fact that agents usually use disguises, the fact that the console goes [BEEP!], etc. When any mission picked at random is more likely than not to confirm the statement, what is the point of citation? Which out of the dozens (hundreds?) of choices do you reference, and when do you stop adding refs? If one will do, why add three? If none will do, why add any?

If you know you're going to be adding more refs as you go, I agree it wouldn't make sense to start with sources and then switch.

Sorry this is a bit disjointed; I've got to get back to some IRL work, so kind of in a hurry. Hope it makes sense.

~Neshomeh 18:56, June 3, 2014 (UTC)

I suppose to some extent I'm biased by the fact that my current editing is historical information. So 'The SO is the head of the DMS' would be in the lead, and thus not be cited (as the lead should summarise the article). 'The SO became the head of the DMS following the Mysterious Somebody's assumption of power' would be in the article, and would be cited - because it's a specific event at a specific time.

How I'm going to deal with things when I start running into personality/no-historical-data issues, I have no idea. Probably badly!

You say 'If the whole page comes from a small number of stories, what's the point in marking up every individual statement... when you can just put two or three links at the bottom?', and that's true. But the flip side is - they may well not stay at a couple of stories. To take an example: had we owned a wiki when Nenya and Rosie were writing, the article on the Wisteria could have been a stub saying 'The Wisteria is the head of the Department of Operations. He is prone to wearing a tracksuit, and loves jogging.'

That, clearly, didn't need references. But then along comes me, and writes Reorg, and I edit the Wiki: 'The Wisteria is the head of the Department of Operations, and a member of the Board of Flowers since its inception following the Reorganisation. He is prone to wearing a tracksuit, and loves jogging.'

And then... well, in this case it's me again, writing CD, and I have to make another edit: 'The Wisteria was the head of the Department of Operations, and a member of the Board of Flowers from its inception following the Reorganisation to his death in the 2006 invasion. He was prone to wearing a tracksuit, and loved jogging.'

"Laurel"

"The Reorganisation: Chapter 19"

"Crashing Down: Chapter 6"

This example illustrates two points, or more accurately, asks two questions:

• At what point do we switch over to references? And who does that responsibility lie on? If there's six sources for an entire article, but they're referencing statements up and down the length of it, why should the person who only wrote a story that claims so-and-so likes chocolate be the one to do all that leg-work? And, in fact, why do we expect they will? They're far more likely just to add yet another source. It's quicker.

• When you do have references, using a single tag for a massive chunk of the article - unrelated statements, not one cohesive section - can lead to orphaned statements. Okay, in the example it's which department the Wisteria headed - but the extreme case, an agent whose entire article is written from one mission, and then expanded piecemeal, would end up with only one ref from their first ever mission - right at the end, where it originally ref'd the entire article.

And yeah, we can hope that people will put them in - but it seems unlikely. Referencing your own new addition, yes; making sure the previous references still cover everything afterwards? It seems unlikely.

I'm aware that my examples are lacking in punch, but you can extrapolate up to the appropriate scale. The TCDA, if it had a full wiki article, would have started out with one reference - and would now have more than twenty. Huinesoron (talk) 17:09, June 4, 2014 (UTC)

To quote the Lorax, I see your point, but I wouldn't know the answer.

I think, though, that it comes down to a question of who cares enough to bother with this sort of thing at all. I mean, right now you're doing your history stuff and I'm doing the department pages, because we looked at those things and went "Huh, these articles could be improved a whole lot with a rewrite and some proper references. I should make that happen." It is to be hoped that there will be someone to do this kind of work for any article once it expands enough to need it. Articles that grow piecemeal the way you're talking about tend to wind up pretty shaky purely from a writing standpoint, since people tend to simply tack on new information rather than integrating it—few people like to change or remove what came before. At some point, it gets so rambling that it needs a total rewrite anyway, and then you can write it in such a way that it's conducive to refs.

This probably wouldn't even be a conversation if we were dealing with actual books and had page numbers to use. Then there really would be no excuse for not using precise refs. But, since it's the Internet, there's only so precise you can be. (On the other hand, I did download a word count tool for my browser specifically so I could identify paragraph numbers, the aim being to eventually put that to use here, but I don't expect everyone to do that, so I'm left wondering what's the point if it's only going to be me?)

Another point is that people who aren't very comfortable with editing are more likely to help out the simpler things are, so sources are a way to balance the need for information against people's fear of code. ... This might be the best point I've made so far, so I'm gonna stop here for now. {= )

~Neshomeh 18:46, June 4, 2014 (UTC)

Hmm. I see your point, I suppose - so I'll make a new one:

Don't try and stop me sticking references everywhere, even if there's only two sources. ;) Huinesoron (talk) 05:21, June 5, 2014 (UTC)

Wouldn't dream of it. Just try to avoid link redundancy and needlessly dense blizzards of tags, and I won't quibble. {= ) ~Neshomeh 14:53, June 5, 2014 (UTC)

An actual solid example! I started off writing Kaitlyn's page with only two sources - her DCPS shorts and 'Of Wolves'. That would have been prime 'source, don't reference' material. Then I remembered she wrote some of the Book of Bast. Still, three isn't too many for sources.

So I could easily have written it in source format. But then I remembered that she also has a Shrine in the temple - and is in OFUDisc - and discovered references for Chelsea's side of things. I have a list of thirteen potential references now. ;) Good thing I used them from the very start! Huinesoron (talk) 05:54, June 11, 2014 (UTC)

I still think it's strange to see tags in character articles at all... but that's mostly because I tend to come at it from the perspective of authors writing pages about their own characters, in which case we know it's true because the author said so, no challenge possible. It makes perfect sense to use refs if you're writing an article about someone else's character. I don't know how to resolve these two situations to a uniform policy, or if that's even necessary. Any suggestions? (This is revised from my original response, which went something along the lines of "Yeah, well, that's weird and your face is weird!" ^_~ ) ~Neshomeh 14:00, June 11, 2014 (UTC)

[De-indent] Ah, well, there's the difference. I'm not thinking about it as 'authors writing about their own characters'; I'm thinking about it as a research resource. Partly about the characters, but also about their circumstances.

Example: Kaitlyn is partnered with Chelsea, who's also partnered with Allie; Kaitlyn also works closely with Bast. What are the specifics of how that works? Imagine you're Lacksidacksical, and you want Agent Remora to be in a similar situation. If I'd just given Kaitlyn a bunch of links, you'd've had to read several of them to track down which ones say that. This way, you can hit very precise buttons to find out more details.

For a different angle: plotholes. Can you imagine having to read through the entirety of Origins every time you wanted some detail on early portal use? Eesh!

(My face is totally weird. So is the PPC. It's a good fit.) Huinesoron (talk) 06:46, June 12, 2014 (UTC)

Again, perfectly sensible. I quail at the thought of marking up Nume's and Jenni's articles, though. There are a number of details that aren't directly stated in any stories because they're just background information I've discovered while writing them, or they're from old RPs with no transcript available, or (in Jenni's case) because she's existed in various forms almost as long as I can remember, and there's a lot of history external to the PPC. I've always written bios for my own information, so I don't forget things, as much as anyone else's.

Now, in my case I can cheat, because I keep their bios on my site, too, so I can use the bio-on-my-site as a reference. But they're exact copies, so in spirit I'm still expecting people to take those articles at their word because I wrote them and I said so. So... what then, and what about people who've only written bios on the wiki? How do we keep future editors from looking at character articles written before we had specific expectations of accountability and going "No references? Obviously lies and mischief! Let's just remove everything I can't find in ten minutes of scanning the two missions the author wrote." ... Ref the article's edit history, maybe? "Edit dated XX.XX.XXXX by Author's Name"? Feels a little dubious, but would it work?

~Neshomeh 14:07, June 12, 2014 (UTC)