Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2012-10/Quality of sources

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Quality of sources

[edit]

This proposal has a main part and an optional part for which there are two separate options.

Main proposal

Add to Attestation section following Conveying meaning subsection:

Quality of sources

Sources which contain spelling, grammatical, or syntactical errors are best avoided since it can be difficult to distinguish between errors and deliberate use of non-standard forms. In this respect, sources that have been through a review process should be given more credence than those that have not, as non-standard and rare forms used in sources that have been through a review process are more likely to be used intentionally than when used in other sources. Items considered reviewed may include books from a reputable publisher (not self-published), peer reviewed journals, and news sources possessing an editorial board.

In Attestation section replace:

Where possible, it is better to cite sources that are likely to remain easily accessible over time, so that someone referring to Wiktionary years from now is likely to be able to find the original source. As Wiktionary is an online dictionary, this naturally favors media such as Usenet groups, which are durably archived by Google. Print media such as books and magazines will also do, particularly if their contents are indexed online. Other recorded media such as audio and video are also acceptable, provided they are of verifiable origin and are durably archived. We do not quote other Wikimedia sites[1][2] (such as Wikipedia), but we may use quotations found on them (such as quotations from books available on Wikisource). When citing a quotation from a book, please include the ISBN.

with:

Where possible, it is better to cite sources that are likely to remain easily accessible over time, so that someone referring to Wiktionary years from now is likely to be able to find the original source. Print media such as books and magazines are good, particularly if their contents are indexed online. Online-only sources are acceptable if they meet the durability requirement below. Other recorded media such as audio and video are also acceptable, provided they are of verifiable origin and are durably archived. We do not quote other Wikimedia sites[3][4] (such as Wikipedia), but we may use quotations found on them (such as quotations from books available on Wikisource). When citing a quotation from a book, please include the ISBN.

Durability of sources

Online-only media are not considered durably archived unless they are also held in an independent archive that is considered to be robust enough that the material would survive the collapse of the organization maintaining it. The archive must also not be susceptible to egregious removal of material at the request of third parties.

Explicit status of selected sites
Considered durable Not considered durable
  • Usenet
  • WebCite
  • Google Groups (except Usenet)
  • Wayback Machine

Add to Spanning at least a year subsection:

Internet-only citations can be difficult to date accurately as they do not always carry date stamps. Internet archives (even ones that are not durable such as the Wayback Machine) may be used to establish an upper bound for the creation date, but should be used with caution. For instance if there are two citations from 2003 and an archive shows a copy of a third from 2005, this does not establish that they span a year since there could have been an even older 2003 version which was not archived. However, finding a 2001 version in the archive would prove they spanned more than a year.

Optional part

[edit]

Replace:

Attestation

“Attested” means verified through[5]

  1. clearly widespread use,
  2. use in a well-known work, or
  3. use in permanently recorded media, conveying meaning, in at least three independent instances spanning at least a year (different requirements apply for certain languages).[6]

with:

Attestation

“Attested” means verified through[7]

  1. clearly widespread use,
  2. use in a well-known work, or
  3. use in permanently recorded media, conveying meaning, in at least three independent instances spanning at least a year (different requirements apply for internet-only citations and certain languages).[6]

Add to Number of citations subsection:

Two citations from internet-only sources count as only one durably archived citation. For instance, an entry which requires three citations and already has two from book sources would need a further two from WebCite or Usenet to meet the attestation requirement.

Add to Spanning at least a year subsection:

Where internet-only citations are used and the non-internet citations do not span at least a year then the requirement is increased to spanning at least five years.

  1. ^ Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2008-04/WMF jargon
  2. ^ Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2010-06/WMF jargon accepted when it meets CFI
  3. ^ Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2008-04/WMF jargon
  4. ^ Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2010-06/WMF jargon accepted when it meets CFI
  5. ^ Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2010-11/Attestation in academic journals
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Wiktionary:Votes/2012-04/Languages with limited documentation
  7. ^ Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2010-11/Attestation in academic journals
  • Rationale: A previous vote for allowing WebCite as a source failed (but only just), partly because of concerns over the quality of citations that might result. As there is nothing in the CFI that explicitly addresses quality this concern was justified. This proposal seeks to add a quality clause into the CFI and, having addressed that issue, to reintroduce the idea of internet-archived citations. The extended requirements for internet-only sources has been broken out into a separate optional vote.
  • Rationale of previous proposal: WebCite archive is now well established and widely used by academics and publishers. The site has only ever taken down a handful of pages ("around 20 out of several million records" according to Dr. Eysenbach, founder of WebCite) and even those are still available for inspection on an individual basis. The site can now be considered "durably archived", but nevertheless, it is proposed that a greater number of citations be required, for safety's sake.
  • Vote starts: 00.01 30 October 2012
  • Vote ends: 23:59 29 November 2012

Support main proposal

[edit]
  1. Support, as nominator. SpinningSpark 08:31, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support. — Ungoliant (Falai) 08:39, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support —CodeCat 12:14, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support. —RuakhTALK Below, Ƿidsiþ raises a good point — and I would support a small change to address it — but even without such a change, I don't think this is a problem. The proposal does not introduce any specific rules that would require any specific cites to be rejected; rather, it merely notes the general principle that some cites are of better quality than others. (Actually, come to think of it, a bigger problem is that it never even mentions the possibility that a cite could be rejected for this reason. It invites arguments along the lines of, "Well, §'Quality of sources' says these three sources are 'best avoided', but they're our only three sources for this word, so we don't have a choice: we have to use them.") —RuakhTALK 14:04, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Support —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 15:10, 4 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support Quality & Durability of sources, although I would have preferred different wording on the first to emphasize that spelling is not strongly supported but existence is (if that makes any sense). Oppose addition to Spanning at least a year, unless other archives are added, in which case it's tolerable if a bit verbose. Oppose including WebCite without a separate vote. In the future, it would be easier to make several votes out of these, and be patient to determine the results of one before expanding on it with another. DAVilla 06:11, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose main proposal

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  1. Oppose Ƿidsiþ 08:45, 30 October 2012 (UTC) The change to "Attestation" I like, but I have to oppose this because of the "Quality of Sources" section which appears to leave older works in a tough position. If it began "Those mdoern sources which..." or something I could support, but as it is it seems to leave no backing for historical sources with variant spellings -- it's also far from clear what kind of "review process" anything older than a couple of hundreds years ago went through, but I wouldn't want to exclude them. Ƿidsiþ 08:45, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    Shame you didn't raise that point before the vote went live so it could be incorporated. SpinningSpark 11:27, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    The problem with your amendment is that the period of normalization begins at drastically different times for different lects in different places. Using words like "modern" and "historical" seems to ignore works that are relatively recent, but reflect an outdated standard (for example, in Yiddish or Tongan). —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 15:15, 4 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Oppose Dan Polansky (talk) 09:41, 4 November 2012 (UTC) The "Quality of sources" section does not state any necessary quality conditions the source must meet. It speaks in terms of "best avoided" and of some sources being "given more credence" than other sources. By doing so, it does not rule out "sources which contain spelling, grammatical, or syntactical errors". Thus, it allows quotations from WebCite without truly requiring that they be free from careless mistakes. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:41, 4 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Oppose Liliana • 18:49, 12 November 2012 (UTC) not again[reply]
  4. Oppose WebCite lacks true archive diversity. It seems to be a single set of servers. Contrast that with Usenet and the worldwide large depository and university libraries of paper documents. DCDuring TALK 22:39, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Abstain main proposal

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Support increasing number of citations

[edit]
  1. Support for Webcite. — Ungoliant (Falai) 08:39, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support Ƿidsiþ 08:46, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support, I think. —RuakhTALK 14:06, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 15:08, 4 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Support Dan Polansky (talk) 14:11, 10 November 2012 (UTC) If the main proposal passes, I support counting an internet-only citation as 0.5 citations for attestation. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:11, 10 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose increasing number of citations

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  1. Oppose SpinningSpark 08:37, 30 October 2012 (UTC). I believe the quality requirement and increase in timespan will be sufficient protection. Too high a number of cites will discourage useful contributions. SpinningSpark 08:37, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Oppose for Usenet. — Ungoliant (Falai) 08:39, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Oppose —CodeCat 12:14, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Oppose especially for Usenet. I think diversity of archives is more helpful than number of citations. Books, newspapers, and journals are archived in many libraries (and online). WebCite material seems singly archived. I do not think that 6 or 600 WebCite quotations are as good as three book citations. DCDuring TALK 22:30, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Oppose. We need to be certain about the durability of the sources. Adding more work for ourselves does not do that. DAVilla 06:13, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Abstain increasing number of citations

[edit]

Support increasing time span

[edit]
  1. Support, SpinningSpark 08:31, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support. — Ungoliant (Falai) 08:39, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support Ƿidsiþ 08:46, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support. —RuakhTALK 14:08, 30 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Support Dan Polansky (talk) 14:11, 10 November 2012 (UTC) If the main proposal passes, I support increasing time span for internet-only citations. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:11, 10 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support - -sche (discuss) 22:47, 19 November 2012 (UTC) (if the main proposal passes)[reply]
  7. Support regardless of what else passes. DAVilla 06:22, 26 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose increasing time span

[edit]
  1. Oppose —CodeCat 12:15, 30 October 2012 (UTC) As this makes it much harder for us to cover internet slang.[reply]
  2. Oppose —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 15:07, 4 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Oppose I think we benefit from being topical if possible. DCDuring TALK 22:20, 19 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Abstain increasing time span

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Decision

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Unless someone objects:

  • The "main part" fails, 5–4–0 (55.6% to 44.4%), for lack of consensus.
    • I'm rejecting DAVilla's vote as invalid: although it's in the "support" section, it's actually trying to be a support-in-part,-oppose-in-part. That's invalid in general, since all of the "support" voters are implicitly saying "I support this proposal as a whole", i.e. "I support each part of this proposal provided all the other parts pass as well". We could quibble over whether it should be allowed in this specific case, but IMHO it's not worth having that discussion, given that even if we did allow it, the part that he supported would still only be supported by a 6–4–0 (60% to 40%) majority, which is not clear consensus.
  • The first "option" (increasing the number of citations required for online-only cites) fails, 4–5–1 (44.4% to 55.6%).
    • I'm counting Dan Polansky's conditional "support" vote as an abstention, because its precondition was not met, and it did not specifically say that it should be read as an "oppose" vote in that case.
  • The second "option" (increasing the time-span required for online-only cites) fails, 5–3–2 (62.5% to 37.5%), for lack of consensus.
    • I'm counting Dan Polansky's and -sche's conditional "support" votes as abstentions, because their precondition was not met, and they did not specifically say that they should be read as "oppose" votes in that case.
    • I think 62.5% is in the range that's up to the discretion of the person closing the vote. I'm using that discretion to speculate that one or more of the not-explicitly-marked-as-conditional votes was probably, nonetheless, cast conditionally. After all, the vote description labels this as an "option" tacked onto a "main part", and that main part did not pass; one vote is explicitly marked as unconditional, but no others are, and the context seems to make conditionality the implicit default (even if no one really thought about it consciously until Dan Polansky's vote).

(If anyone does object to any of the above, please leave a comment.)

—RuakhTALK 02:32, 3 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

And if I don't object? :) —CodeCat 03:58, 3 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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