Talk:Suvorov's Italian and Swiss expedition

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A fact from Suvorov's Italian and Swiss expedition appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 5 July 2007.
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[edit] Citing sources

From WP:CITE: You should always add a citation when quoting published material, and the citation should be placed directly after the quotation, which should be enclosed within double quotation marks — "like this" — or single quotation marks if it's a quote-within-a-quote — "and here is such a 'quotation' as an example." Whoever put those quotes in the article is (presumably) taking them from some source, which should be specified. -David Schaich Talk/Cont 23:08, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Do you suppose they are spurious? If you don't, the quotes are not helpful at all. The article was written by a professional historian with academic background, so I don't expect forgeries here. Wikipedia does not approve pointless formalism. WP:POINT: Wikipedia is not consistent and is not expected to be. --Ghirla-трёп- 23:19, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Ghirla, get off your friggin' high horses and stop accusing others when they just do what they are supposed and expected to do. It's how this site works, if you don't like it, you know what to do. I've poked Clio about it and (s)he seems at least to be civil about it. Circeus 23:20, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Circeus, it's not a big deal to sprinkle {{fact}} tags all over Wikipedia. If this is what you expect from our editors, then our perspectives differ radically. I don't appreciate this sort of "editing" at all. When {{fact}}, {{cn}}, etc appeared in Wikipedia they were supposed to help in identifying, removing or referencing dubitable, spurious, or OR assertions. Now they are abused as a club to beat mainspace editors by passerbys without any other reason than whim and/or pointless formalism. --Ghirla-трёп- 23:37, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
Furthermore, I take issue with your attempts to find imaginary incivility where there is none. In Wikipedia, we discuss issues robustly and openly. There is nothing incivil about that. What I consider incivil is such phrases as "friggin' high horses", "his favourite technique", etc., etc. They don't lead us anywhere. --Ghirla-трёп- 23:46, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
I definitely expect our editors to request citations for material (in this case quotations) that should have been cited in the first place. What I don't expect them to do is get snippy over such requests in articles whose content they did not write in the first place. Circeus 23:49, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
I asked two legitimate questions: what is being disputed? what's the purpose of referencing in this particular case? You declined to answer and obfuscated the query by inappropriate allegations of incivility. End of the topic. --Ghirla-трёп- 23:54, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
The text clearly indicates places other editors want to see specific inline citations, and ideally, every fact should have inline citation. On another note, who is the "a professional historian with academic background" mentioned above?-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  00:08, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
This article, like all on Wikipedia, is written by a group of pseudonymous and anonymous editors. If one of them were a professional historian with an academic background, I would expect him or her to be familiar with the importance of citing quotations; it was certainly grilled into me when I was doing my history degree. Perhaps that's the reason uncited quotations jump out at me like red flags.
In any event, it should be a trivial request -- whoever added those quotations took them from somewhere, and knows where. I simply assumed they were unfamiliar with WP:CITE and WP:V, which is why I merely quoted the policy above. WP:V (whose first paragraph states, Editors should provide a reliable source for quotations) is one of Wikipedia's core content policies and should not be ignored lightly, without good reason. I did not expect this to be a contentious issue. -David Schaich Talk/Cont 00:34, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Are the citation requests for the source of the quotations? Tom Harrison Talk 00:12, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

It would be my guess that yes.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  00:14, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

At a glance that does not seem like an unreasonable request. What am I missing? Tom Harrison Talk 00:18, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

I am coming here to offer my opinion, seeing as this conflict was posted to AN. I believe the fact tag is entirely reasonable. I agree with Piotrus, that adding citations only makes wikipedia better, and that fact tags should only be removed if replaced with a citation. It isn't up to one editor to judge whether the fact tag was serious enough or important enough to warrant citations. Ghirla seems to imply that this article is exempt from wikipedia policy based on the unconfirmed claim that the article was written by a professional historian with academic background. Wikipedia doesn't give exemptions to scholars. Anyone can edit wikipedia, and anyone can lie about their credentials. The way we get around the anonymity of the internet is by making sure users can verify the content (normally through citing our sources). And one last point, the citing sources guidelines specifically says that we must supply citations for quoted text. I don't see anyway around this. There is a quotation attributed to Suvorov. How is a reader supposed to verify that this is actually a Suvorov quote? (finally, Ghirla seems to think that the citation needed tag is there for disputed or dubious information. The fact tag is partially for labeling a quotation which lacks a citation. There are a whole slew of other templates used such as {{verify source}} or {{dubious}}. This isn't a matter of us not believing the article text. It's simply a matter of a direct quotation that is not attributed to any source.)-Andrew c [talk] 00:25, 6 July 2007 (UTC)