Talk:Citius, Altius, Fortius

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If the DAB page makes claims, then Citations and sources are needed

If the DAB page is merely a disambiguation page, with no additional claims, then no source citations are needed. But DAB pages are not exempt from WP:VERIFIABILITY. If a claim is made, it needs a source citation, or can be challenged.

So please be sure that all additional claims on the Citius, Altius, Fortius page are cited for each claim made. As a courtesy to editors who may have added various claims previously, before Wikipedia citation policy is what it is today, one of the two existing unsourced claims have been tagged ^{{{citation needed}}} to allow some time for sources to be added. Cheers. N2e (talk) 03:42, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You appear to be confused about the purpose of dab pages. They are not for making claims and having citations and being verifiable. They are solely for the purpose of helping navigate readers and editors towards the real articles. So they need to provide enough context to describe the subjects they link to, so that people can figure out which one they want to go to, and nothing more than that. Anything resembling a "claim" should appear within the article they link to and be verified there: MOS:DAB says explicitly "References should not appear on disambiguation pages". The logical conclusion is that [citation needed] tags should also not appear on disambiguation pages. Moreover, re your comment (in one of your edits) that "the claim that this journal was "formerly Citius, Altius, Fortius" needs a citation": it is easy to find that it's true via a search (for instance it says so here). Feel free to add that to the article about the journal, but not here. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:50, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I do not believe I'm confused about the purpose of DAB pages. If such pages merely disambiguate, they need no citations.

If they DO make claims, over and above the mere links that are necessary to disambiguate, then they would be subject to challenge as they are NOT exempt from the core Wikipedia policy of WP:V. When I challenged a couple of claims, you reverted. When I made another edit, apparently in synch with the intent of your edit summary "remove translation from Olympic motto entry, that's not the place for it" here, you reverted that as well.

Would recommend somewhat more talk/discussion on your part, and less pure revision as if you are certain you are right, and that you do so earlier in the process of a difference of opinion between editors in editing a page. I do thank you for responding after I initiated the discussion, after your second or third revert of my attempt to make Wikipedia a better encyclopedia.

So please cut out the incessant reverting, and let's Talk it out here. We are not in that much of a hurry to get this resolved. Cheers. N2e (talk) 04:19, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

PS per your edit summary request to "bring others in to help us get the policy right": I've made a request at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:14, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That is a fine idea, and exactly what I was suggesting when I asked you to stop with all the reverting. N2e (talk) 04:19, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No, citations are not needed on a dab page. The annotation to each entry serves to help the reader decide whether it is the entry they are seeking, and sometimes to explain why that entry is included in the dab page. We state in a dab page that one Jane Bloggs is an Australian pianist ane another a Canadian poet, with their dates, without any citations. The terms used in a dab page should be properly sourced in the article to which the link goes, and the earlier title of that journal is indeed sourced in the targeted article, so all is well. I was about to boldly remove the {{cn}}, but on second thoughts will leave it for anyone else coming here from Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Disambiguation#Citius.2C_Altius.2C_Fortius. PamD 07:32, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As has been pointed out above, MOSDAB explicitly states that references should not appear on dab pages. It also has examples such as "John Adams (composer) (born 1947), American composer who came to prominence with his opera Nixon in China" which include unsourced statements about the subject of the target article, in this case even a living person. There is no justification for the {{cn}} tag and I am removing it. PamD 08:38, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Pam, so is the distinction, in your view, that a DAB page can make quite an extensive set of claims, as long as each claim is sourced in the linked article? N2e (talk) 13:29, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

A dab page should not make "an extensive set of claims", beyond what is needed to distinguish the entry from other entries on the page for the reader (so for people it's generally appropriate to include dates, nationality, occupation/claim-to-notability, as any of those might be what the reader needs) and in some cases to point out what the connection is with the dab page name (eg former title, subtopic, etc). All this info should come from the target article: when creating dab entries for people I often copy and paste the opening sentence "X Y (dates - possibly with places and months) is a (nationality) (occupation)." and then edit it to get the normal "X Y (dates - just years), (nationality) (occupation)" dab page entry. I tend towards brevity, and wouldn't usually be as expansive as the MOSDAB example above: I'd tend towards "John Adams (composer) (born 1947), American composer", unless there are other American composers with whom he might be confused so that Nixon in China need be mentioned. PamD 14:55, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Just looked at John Adams (disambiguation), and there is indeed a "John Luther Adams (born 1953), American postminimalist composer", which accounts for the detail in the other composer's dab page entry. But it still doesn't need to be sourced in the dab page, which is not an article but a navigation tool. PamD 15:26, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This DAB page is a microcosm of the problem with not adhering to WP:V on DAB pages

This DAB page is a beautiful illustration of the problem with not adhering to WP:V on DAB pages.

First, I asked for a citation for the "swifter, higher, stronger" claim, since it is not only unsourced in the article that was then linked to, but different words are used for the (unsourced) translation in that article.

Then, User:David Eppstein thought that citations are not needed on DAB pages (a claim that has carried the day within the WP-DAB group where it has been discussed), and then he removed the "swifter, higher, stronger" words himself, saying "(remove translation from Olympic motto entry, that's not the place for it)"

So later that day, I removed the claim at the top of the article "swifter, higher, stronger", using the same logic, and nearly the same edit comment, as David Eppstein had earlier. (and knowing that "swifter" was not supported in any of the articles that are linked to on the DAB page.

User PamD reverts that. She likes the "swifter, higher, stronger" claim. (I assume good faith and figure she may not be aware that the claim is not supported in any of the articles that the DAB page points to.)

I remove the unsupported-by-any-DAB-linked-article text at the top of the DAB page, which would seem to be consistent with PamD's logic, both on this Talk page, as well as the WikiProject-DAB discussions earlier in the day, and so note in the edit summary.

Another user, User:Bkonrad comes back and adds the claim back, but this time with a (sort of) citation to the Wiktionary page that says that citius means "more quickly" (check it out, the altius link is even farther from what we are claiming here). We still have no support for the translation given, "swifter", either from Wiktionary, nor sourced in any of the three pages that the DAB page links to.

I decide to give up, and let it stand. But it stands principally as a shining example of Wikipedia and the sort of original research on DAB pages by many (even seasoned, administrator) editors.

I think this could be fixed. If you don't want polite, smalltext, {{citation needed}} tags on your DAB pages, then create a little DAB-page-specific tag where a [[WP:AGF|helpful}} editor could simply note that an extended claim made on a DAB page is not supported by the linked article. This would allow DAB pages to be improved, over time, so that, per the result of the discussion on WP-DAB earlier today, the claim is actually sourced in the page that is linked to by the DAB page list item.

You all have worn me out on Citius, Altius, Fortius today by all the reverts and failure to address the real problem. Onward into the fog, N2e (talk) 03:39, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Do you actually think that there is an important difference between the words "faster" and "swifter"? And do you think that word-for-word literal translation is somehow a "claim"? Is that what all this edit warring has been about? I think we have a candidate for WP:LAME. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:25, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The topic of THIS section of Talk is NOT about the microcosm of THIS article. It merely uses the events of the day, all made in my assumption set by well-meaning editors, as an example of a bigger problem where LOTS of DAB articles have much material that is not compliant with WP:V. Please read my statement more carefully, and assume good faith. (in particular, avoiding the LAME claim about me when you don't know me, nor my motive). N2e (talk) 05:06, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

WP:LAME does indeed sound about right. Do you sincerely feel that this sort of petty pedantry is helpful to Wikipedia? PamD's advice below is spot on. older ≠ wiser 11:21, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Instead of this time-wasting, how about actually fixing the sourcing in the target articles which concerns you? I have now added much better sources for the previous title of Journal of Olympic History, and for the introduction of the Olympic motto. And, while I don't think there's a significant difference, I've amended the dab page to reflect the "faster..." wording which is sourced in that IOC ref.

If you find "claims" in a dab page which aren't included in the target page, then it's probably sensible to remove them. If you find that the "claim" is slightly misrepresented in the dab page ("swifter" v. "faster"), then fix it. If the "claims" are in the target article but unsourced, then please concentrate on sourcing them there, rather than suggesting that the dab page should have references as forbidden by MOSDAB (your description of this as "a claim that has carried the day within the WP-DAB group where it has been discussed" is misleading, as the statement is clear and long-standing in MOSDAB). PamD 07:38, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

PS Re the general idea that translations need to be cited to sources: WP:TRANSCRIPTION disagrees. One important reason that translations should not require sources (for longer translations than this one) is that it raises copyright violation issues: if we can't make our own translations because any minor variation would be unsourced, and we can't copy text from a source directly, what can we do? —David Eppstein (talk) 18:45, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]