User:Dpbsmith

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The Time Is: ''

Personal website at dpbsmith.com

AKA b:User:Dpbsmith

First edit 06:11, 6 Sep 2003, to Jack London



Citing sources
Traditionally, encyclopedias are not well-referenced. They sometimes provide what might be called "selected bibliographies," things the writer thinks you might want to read next. But references, in the sense of "here's where I got it," no.

Many, but by no means all of the articles in the EB 11th have a set of contributor's initials (which you can look up in a table). Odd, since it doesn't save that much space; the editors don't really want you to focus on the contributor. Well, knowing the name of the contributor is not that helpful anyway. When it's someone like Ernest Rutherford, well, you probably can figure they knew what they were talking about. For the rest, their credibility basically rests on the jumble of letters after their name and the miniature who's-who-like description.

Have I ever heard of "Arthur Dendy, D. Sc., F.R.S., F.Z.S., F.L.S., Professor of Zoology in King's College, London, Zoological Secretary of the Linnean [sic] Society of London. Author of memoirs on systematic zoology, comparative anatomy, embryology, &c?" No. Do I think he knows his stuff when it comes to sponges? Well, yeah, sure, sounds like it, probably. Most of my profs didn't have that many letters after their name. I have no way of knowing whether he was a POV-pusher, though, and you'd better believe you can have letters after your name and still be a POV-pusher. Big-time.

But Wikipedia is different from print encyclopedias, because basically it's all written by anons, registered or not.

I haven't been following the "bad reference/good reference" stuff but I find the whole idea baffling. The purpose of a reference is very simple. You're telling people where you got your information. It's not a question of good or bad, it's a simple statement of fact. If I got my "facts" from The National Enquirer, and I say I got them from the National Enquirer and I give the date and page number, that's a good reference. The only bad reference would be an untruthful reference&mdash;if I got them from the National Enquirer but said they were from The New York Times.

But, either way: if I give the reference, I'm giving people reasonable assurance that I didn't just make the statement up&mdash;unless I'm a total liar and fraud, and there aren't that many of them contributing to Wikipedia.

And a specific reference is verifiable. If I lie about it, I will eventually get caught. If someone says that The New York Times published an article about a 400-pound eight-year-old girl who was inseminated by a space alien and gave birth to a two-headed unicorn, on page 7, July 16th, 2000, well as it happens I can go online courtesy of my local public library and find out in about sixty seconds whether there's really such an article. (I'll leave you in suspense as to the answer).

If someone says "I got it from the National Enquirer, page 1, April 1st, 2000," that's a good reference. First of all, a lot of people will be able to say right off the bat, "The National Enquirer? then I won't believe it."

Furthermore, I can check the context. Maybe it says "It is said that the natives of some remote Canary Islands have an ancient legend that a 400-pound, etc." The chain of traceability is broken. Vanished into the mists of the Canaries.

But maybe it says "Dr. Fargo M. Seneca, chief obstetrician at St. Mary's Hospital in Madison, said that a 400-pound etc." Cool! Another source citation! I can call up St. Mary's and say, I'm writing an article for Wikipedia, I'm tracing a statement by Dr. Seneca in a news report. Could I speak to him, please?

(By the way: I've had very good luck contacting "press" contacts by email or phone, and saying "I'm editing an article in Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, and I was trying to check thus-and-such fact..." I always give Wikipedia's URL. Sometimes I even explain that anybody can edit Wikipedia. So far, I've gotten respectful and helpful treatment every time).

So, I say, cite your sources. If you got it from a secondary source, just say so. The important thing is to say where you got it and maintain a chain of traceability.

P. S. True story about how this works. In grad school, a bunch of us were having a bull sessions about whether or not UFOs were real. One guy was very impressed by a book written by someone from APRO or NICAP or something, and, in particular, by a statement that appears in it that said that some pieces of an alien craft had been analyzed and were of some substance of a purity that was never seen on Earth and couldn't occur on Earth as the oxygen would degrade it within a few weeks. He was a chemist, IIRC, and knew that indeed any substance that pure couldn't have been terrestrial in origin.

So I said, "OK, let's take this as our test case. How do we know the author of the book wasn't just making it up?" The book that said that the scientist who did the analysis was something like "Dr. Ortega Perez-Guillermo of the Metallurgy Department, University of San Andrés, La Paz, Bolivia."

I went to grad school at a big state university with a fine library. I did a bit of poking around. Guess what? Our library had quite a lot of material from the Universidad de San Andrés, including several faculty directories spaced over the last ten or fifteen years. It turned out that the Universidad de San Andrés didn't even have Departamento de la Metalurgia. And in any case, it didn't have anyone named Dr Ortega Perez-Guillermo in any department.

I asked whether we should write to the university, but it was generally agreed that it didn't seem as if that story was very credible.

Source citations are heap big medicine.

"The sky is blue"
People are always giving this as an example of something that does not need citation. In fact, it is a bad example, first because the sky is not always blue and therefore this is a "fact" that is not really quite true, and secondly, because as is so often the case of things that "can't be sourced because they're just common knowledge," it is very easily sourced:


 * A field guide notes that "the blue sky is so commonplace that it is taken for granted".

One can go on to add:

The poet Robert W. Service says "while the blue sky bends above/You've got nearly all that matters". Songwriter Irving Berlin wrote of "Blue Skies smiling at me," airmen fly into the wild blue yonder.

But the sky is not always blue. In the Bible, Jesus says to the Pharisees "When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red". A naturalist notes that "At twilight, salmon reds, oranges, purples, white-yellows, and many shades of blue can be seen." And songwriter Oscar Hammerstein wrote of "when the sky is a bright canary yellow."

It took me less than ten minutes to turn up the Schaeffer and Minnaert sources and another fifteen to find the rest. If something is really a commonly known fact, it is just not that hard to source.

Brag list
Significant contributor to:
 * 1601 (Mark Twain) (original contributor of article)
 * A Cold Wind Blows (original contributor of article)
 * Alexander P. de Seversky (original contributor of article)
 * Appointment in Samarra (most of present article)
 * Arboretum (original contributor of article, largely eclipsed now by further expansion)
 * Baby talk (this revision)
 * Baranger Studios (original contributor of articles)
 * Blaschka glass flowers (original contributor of article)
 * Nan Britton (original contributor of article)
 * Bulkie roll (original contributor of article)
 * Bummel
 * Brook Farm (about 2/3 of 14 Oct 2004 version)
 * Camera lucida (original contributor of article)
 * Casabianca (original contributor of article)
 * China red (original contributor of article)
 * Chipped beef on toast, from this revision to this one
 * Chunking (replacement article; author of content as of 11:01, 7 Oct 2004)
 * Computer Control Company, Inc. (original contributor of article)
 * Craik-O'Brien-Cornsweet illusion (original author, most of present article as of July 2005)
 * John Collier (original contributor of article)
 * Evan S. Connell (original contributor of article, this version
 * Conquest of Space (original contributor of article)
 * Currier and Ives (original contributor of article)
 * Seymour DeKoven (original contributor of article)
 * Disney animators' strike (original contributor, apart from a previous one-line redirect)
 * Elsie De Wolfe (Lady Mendl) (original contributor of article)
 * F. Holland Day (original contributor of article)
 * Enrollment management (original contributor of article)
 * Eyeglass prescription (original contributor of article)
 * Fasting girls (original contributor of article)
 * Floater.jpg Original artwork for Floaters
 * Andrew Fluegelman (original contributor of article)
 * Free lunch (original contributor of article)
 * Fried clams (original contributor of article)
 * Fried dough (original contributor of article)
 * The Gadget Maker (User:Xmnemonic started the article and invited me to expand it)
 * Paul Gallico (expanding substub; in progress 14:54, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC))
 * Geniac (original contributor of article)
 * Gibraltar rock (candy) (original contributor of article
 * Glass flowers (original contributor)
 * Gracenote (original contributor; written as replacement for a copyvio)
 * Great Whale (original contributor of article)
 * Fred Harvey (created pursuant to work on Blue-plate special)
 * Heathkit (original contributor of article)
 * Ada Louise Huxtable (original contributor of article)
 * Thos. W. Jackson (original contributor of article)
 * Howard Johnsons (significant contributions, about half of present article)
 * IBM PC compatible (about half of present article, specifically the portions dealing with the reasons why hardware-level compatibility became important)
 * It Should Happen To You (original contributor of article) 6 Nov 2004 version
 * Kitty Foyle (novel) (major expansion from a two-sentence stub)
 * Koster and Bial's Music Hall (original contributor)
 * Liberal Arts, Inc. (original contributor)
 * Lili (expanding stub; in progress as of 16:03, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC))
 * LINC (most of the text, as of 25 Nov 2003)
 * John D. MacDonald (original contributor of article)
 * Jack London (approximately 3/4 of current article)
 * Madison, Wisconsin Photo of Wisconsin state capitol building
 * Mapparium (original contributor)
 * Marine Biological Laboratory (original contributor of article)
 * The_Master_Key_(novel) (original contributor of article)
 * John P. Marquand (most of present article)
 * Massachusetts_Institute_of_Technology Photo of Great Dome at night&mdash;no longer in article, replaced by someone else's better image
 * Mozart effect from this stub to this
 * J. Fred Muggs (wrote this revision)
 * Mutoscope (original contributor of article)
 * Natoma (Victor Herbert's operatic flop) (original contributor of article)
 * Nevil Shute (section on his style and themes)
 * Newfoundland (dog) (original contributor of article)
 * ''The New York Graphic (original contributor of article)
 * Nomogram (provided two examples)
 * Oyster pirate (original contributor)
 * Pigsticking (original contributor of article)
 * Lydia Pinkham (about 2/3 of present article)
 * Darryl Ponicsan (original contributor of article)
 * Pushing on a string (original contributor of article)
 * Radio Row (original contributor of article)
 * Raines law (greatly expanded)
 * Rice pudding (most of this revision)
 * Amanda McKittrick Ros, about 2/3 of present article (from this stub to this)
 * Run it up the flagpole (creator of article)
 * Sea urchin (pictures of test, pluteus, Diadema; about 2/3 of the current text)
 * Super 35 film (Original contributor of article)
 * Svengali deck (especially the diagram)
 * Sexual revolution (sections on "Lady Chatterley's Lover, Tropic of Cancer, and Fanny Hill" and "The Nonfiction Sex Manuals")
 * Simon and Schuster (original contributor of article)
 * Sound recording (about 2/3 of the section on magnetic recording, including picture)
 * Svengali
 * Technology Review (about 2/3 of this version of the article.
 * That's Amore (original contributor of article)
 * D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (original contributor of article)
 * TRAC (original contributor of article)
 * Trinity study (original contributor of article)
 * Triple threat man (original contributor of article)
 * Tweedledum and Tweedledee (original contributor of article)
 * United States Leather Company (original contributor of article]]
 * Victory Through Air Power (original contributor of article)
 * Victor Orthophonic Victrola (original contributor of article, 2008)
 * Walton and O'Rourke (original contributor; by-product of working on Lili)
 * Wang Laboratories (most of current text)
 * Whiffenpoof (this revision, replacing previous version which was just a redirect)
 * Whosarat.com (original contributor of article)
 * Jerome Wiesner (original contributor of article)
 * Dooley Wilson (original contributor of article)
 * Ella Wheeler Wilcox (most of current article)
 * University of Wisconsin-Madison (three pictures; sections on WARF and Sterling Hall bombing)
 * John Woolman (original contributor of article)

VfD rescues (I did significant editing of these pages subsequent to their having been listed on Votes for Deletion)
 * American World University (with User:L33tminion) (NPOV-ed what started as an encomium for a diploma mill)
 * Blue-plate special Expanded from two-sentence dictdef.
 * Bummel
 * Gerovital Expanded and NPOV-ed from promotional stub.
 * Gin Sour
 * Hanukkah bush
 * I'm Henery the Eighth, I Am
 * J. Fred Muggs Most of expansion from this to this
 * La Borinqueña
 * List of famous pairs
 * Nurse assistant skills
 * Potato pancake
 * Sunny Jim Most of article as of [this version]
 * Testilying All except opening paragraph, as of this version
 * Three Men on the Bummel (AfD rescue of article on "bummel." Most content of present article).

A book reference template example
(for my own cut-and-paste use)

Etc.
Parish of Christ Church/Iglesia de San Juan

BikeNorwood

RFC1 Bates method article
Dpbsmith. About the google test on Bates method and Natural vision improvement. I have got another result. How did get your 20000 versus 40000 result ? regards, Seeyou (talk) 18:45, 5 October 2008 (UTC)