Talk:John R. Alison

Improving Unclear Sources

Thank you, Doncram, for your suggestion to improve the clarity of the sources in this article. I've read How to Cite but was still unsure how to document this article. Most of the text in this article was taken from the Gathering of Eagles John Alison biography. The biography was generated by the USAF and per their Security and Privacy statement is in the public domain. To show the bulk of the text came from this site, I used the "USGovernment|SourceURL" template at the bottom of the page, as I had seen used on other articles. I expanded the article by adding some quotes about John Alison from two books (Doolittle and Hill) which I cited per WP:CITE. I also added some post-GOE activities and added an external site (National Aviation Hall of Fame), and this could be converted into a citation.

I considered citing every sentence from the GOE text but thought that would be confusing. Instead, I took the approach of a blanket citation of GOE text and included references for the additional text that I added. I can try citing the GOE text and see how that reads. Is that the typical path for articles which start small, from a single source, and slowly expand? Thanks again for your help. Skeet Shooter (talk) 05:37, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Skeet -- Thank you for your response and your concern about improving this article. I do think you are on the right track, to try citing the GOE text by quotation marks or perhaps block section quotes. I appreciate that you are already using proper citation practices on the other sources you have been using to enrich the article, and hence I understand that you can rework this article to avoid both the "needs improvement in referencing"-type tag that I added, and to avoid the "incorporates text from" tag which I regard as much worse. To let you know, the USGovernment source template which generates the "incorporates text from" tag does seem like a huge red flag to me, indicating that the article is not referenced correctly. It is a blanket disclaimer, and it screams inappropriate to me. It has in fact been used on approximately 400 articles but I and others will visit every one, I am working on the A's now. Several other conscientious authors have taken steps to remove the need for the blanket disclaimer, by putting what needs to be quoted in quotes. Whether or not the source is public domain, every separate source does need to be referenced properly, and that includes putting any copied text into quotes. As you rework this article, perhaps first marking large passages in quotes, it may look awkward, that you are giving undue credit for basic facts that happen to be provided by the source. To the extent that the basic facts can be stated in another way, then please do rewrite the material into your own words, and then you can reduce what is perhaps otherwise excessive quoting.

To respond more directly to your question, yes, I do think that this is a fairly common approach to the evolution of an article from a one-source to a multiple-source, better article. When there is only one source, it can seem adequate to have the blanket disclaimer. (Actually, technically, I disagree with that, I think the entire article if necessary should be put in quotes from the beginning.) But when other sources get added, it becomes clear that to attribute material properly, it is necessary to track the source of each fact added to the article, or quote if exact wording is used. And the original source becomes no different from other sources, text copied from it needs to be in quotes also.

Again, I do think you are well on your way towards an excellent article on John Alison. Keep up the good work! Sincerely, doncram (talk) 08:08, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

To be clear, if you put the material from that one source into quotes, and use in-line citations for it, then you can and should remove the blanket disclaimer, by using a regular in-line citation rather than that awful (in my view) USGovernment source template. doncram (talk) 08:10, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the detailed suggestions, Doncram. I'll give them a try. Skeet Shooter (talk) 04:04, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Wow, you've done a great job with in-line citations, clarifying what is the source for all material throughout the article. Really nice work. Thank you for responding so constructively. doncram (talk) 20:26, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Thank very much, Don! Skeet Shooter (talk) 01:22, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Changed to Reference

I changed the National Aviation Hall of Fame external site into a reference. Skeet Shooter (talk) 05:55, 15 January 2008 (UTC)