Grants talk:IEG/find sources 2.0

Interesting idea

Hi! I like the idea of a Wikiproject Source, it sounds like a smart framework for what you're trying to do, and piloting in a couple of languages makes sense. Does anyone have examples of help documentation or resource lists that a project may have already developed on sourcing? I have seen a lot of documentation about how to use sources (referencing) but not much on how to find sources in the first place, and I'm wondering why that is. Siko (WMF) (talk) 08:41, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Hello, Thank you Siko for your initial interest in this proposal. As for you question, I can only speak from my own observations on zhWP and enWP. I could be wrong and I would be happy to stand corrected on the following assessment of the current conditions. I have similar observation with Siko that much documentation is written to evaluate and cite sources, e.g. en:Wikipedia:Evaluating_sources, but not much in finding them (e.g. en:Wikipedia:Book_sources and en:Wikipedia:WikiProject_Resource_Exchange). I am not sure why that is, but the following factors might contribute to this:

1. Finding sources are assumed to be a prerequisite skills for Wikipedia contributors. Filtering/Evaluating sources are more pressing for most contributors in addressing their every-day practices.
2. Providing web links to where reliable sources can be found may be construed as endorsement or even promotion for a certain source-finding platforms.
3. New contributors may have different information access environments (particularly true for Chinese Wikipedians across regions of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan).
4. Despite the efforts in exchanging the access information on enWP e.g. en:Wikipedia:WikiProject_Resource_Exchange/Shared_Resources, these efforts are not coordinated enough to produce a short concise help page.

Thus, I think it is worthwhile to modernize the find sources mechanism and help, with general instructions (why and what demanded by policies and community norms) and specific resources (for various linguistic and disciplinary variations). --Hanteng (talk) 00:46, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Lists

Are you interested in lists of recommended sources like the one at en:Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Dermatology task force/Sources? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:01, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

To be precise, I am interested in finding and establishing ways to expose such lists of sources to any contributors who are not aware of the existence of such specialized lists you mentioned. Personally I think it is worthwhile to document why these lists of specialized sources are better sources in certain situation, and why they are more reliable than others, in such a way to reflect the policies such as en:WP:due proportion of using sources and citations. So please give me your take on how this very list can and should be better introduced to contributors who need to see them. Thanks. --Hanteng (talk) 01:43, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't know much about these sources or about dermatology. But I've heard that the books listed are the major textbooks used by medical school students, and they do meet all of the requirements for en:WP:MEDRS about high-quality secondary sources that reflect scientific consensus on the subject.

As for how to advertise them to contributors, they would presumably be interesting to anyone who edits the content of any article in en:Category:Dermatology task force articles. An en:WP:Edit notice might reach those editors, or perhaps a one-off bot-delivered message. I don't know how you would identify people creating new articles on a relevant subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:41, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Ｉnteresting idea on alerting messages. I would guess that it would be useful for new user to be altered on major edits. However, i am not sure machine-triggered automatic alerting is always a good idea and probably needs policies to support such a change. What about a one-of bot-delivered message for IP users and unconfirmed accounts? --Hanteng (talk) 02:06, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

That might work. You might limit it to edits that add more than a few characters of text, so that simple spelling corrections don't trigger the message. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:12, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Online sources - more than just lists are needed for this mixed bag

For many topics, there are fewer and fewer printed sources, and the information is mostly online. Examples would be articles about computer software, music, films and web sites. It's often difficult to tell from the appearance of a web site or its platform whether it is reliable. WP editors tend to discount anything an a Wordpress site or a blog, but some of these may have editors and be more reliable than proper web sites that have been set up by individuals. Information about which sites are user-contributed, and which are run by reputable experts, would be very helpful to editors trying to document articles. Such information could be added to the Wikipedia article about a specific source. If some standard language could be developed which describes the process through which the sources decide on content, and this were added to the articles, that would make it easy judge the reliability of the source.

Also, if a certain online paper has press releases, user contributed news, editorials, and reporter-written articles, does it distinguish between them in any way, and if so, how? It's important to know, since one article in a source may be vetted by an editor and another may not. Anne Delong (talk) 21:25, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Good idea

Hello Hanteng, i really like your approach. Have you seen this:

• intelwiki [1] "This thesis investigates whether an intelligent system that automatically generates resource recommendations could make the process of editing Wikipedia articles easier. This investigation involves the following research questions: 1) How should a system generate resource recommendations? 2) In what way should a system present the recommended resource materials to the user? 3) Does having streamlined access to recommended resource materials make it easier for users to edit Wikipedia articles?" [2]

See also the review at en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2014-06-25/Recent_research, interesting stuff! --Atlasowa (talk) 11:24, 6 March 2015 (UTC)