[Web4lib] RE: Wikipedia and the sources

[Havens,Andy]

Interesting and related blog post by Raph Koster (a big name in the
gaming industry) just this past Monday on the topic of getting good
stuff into Wikipedia and keeping it there:

http://www.raphkoster.com/2009/01/05/losing-mud-history/

He says:

Curiously, I am used as a reference or citation many times in Wikipedia,
yet I suspect my writings would not meet Wikipedia's guidelines. The
challenge here is creating material that does - with so much existing
only as oral history or as community-driven sites, little will qualify
to be in Wikipedia, with the result that the history is often lost.

There's a lot of interesting comments, too.


- A

Andy Havens
OCLC: Manager of Branding and Creative Services
Phone: 614.764.4326
Mobile: 614.395.4134

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Lars Aronsson
Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 4:34 AM
To: web4lib
Subject: [Web4lib] Wikipedia and the sources


Back in August 2007 I stumbled upon some information about American
writer Elizabeth Berg and wrote a short biographic article in Wikipedia.
It's not long or very good, but not completely bad either.  It provides
just a little more information than you typically find on a book cover.
I think this kind of article can be useful to someone who found her
books and wanted to know some more.

This was just the time when Wikipedia raised its requirements for
articles. Pretty soon, the article was decorated with a little box
complaining that it doesn't properly cite sources.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Berg_(author)

Apparently this writer had two of her titles picked for the "ALA best
books for young adults" (in 1993 and 1997). She also received a "New
England Books Award" in 1997.  But back when I wrote my article, I
couldn't find good sources for these claims.  Now I found websites of
the ALA and NEIBA, but only for the 1997 events.  
The nominations before 1996 are still not on ALA's website.

Wikipedia's article about the American Library Association has a short
section on awards, which is also an improvement over 2007.  
The winners of some awards are listed.  This is not just for curiosity,
it also helps writers of author biographies to "prove" 
to other Wikipedia administrators that these authors are for real.

I think librarians could help Wikipedia enormously by writing basic
articles about standard reference works, book awards and other things
that can serve as sources to cite.  For example, have a look in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Encyclopedias
or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Reference_works
and see if your favorite reference work is adequately described.

Every U.S. university library I walked into (ten years ago, at
least) would have shelves full of "Contemporary Authors". Today I guess
the online version is used. Still, this reference title from Gale
doesn't have an article in Wikipedia. If the Elizabeth Berg article
would cite CA as a source (I don't have access, so I don't know if she's
in there), another Wikipedian might think I'm bluffing.  It's not even
mentioned in the article about Gale,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gale_(Cengage)

The other day, I found an article about a Swedish person was proposed
for deletion because it only cited unreliable sources.  
The cited source was a major Swedish newspaper, but the article about
this newspaper labeled it as "a tabloid", and Wikipedia's article about
tabloids say these are unreliable gossip papers.  
Now, we have different definitions of what "a tabloid" is, and they are
not the same in all countries.  After I provided some more information
about this Swedish newspaper and its history, the deletion proposal was
withdrawn because now the same cited source appeared to be more
reliable.


--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


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