Site Policies Regarding Links and URLs

[Carol]

Wow, this forum looks as controlled as the church of old. I am reminded of a forum I drop out of because I have a phobic reaction to being confined by too much control. Kind of makes me think about what our reality would be if the church had managed to main control?

[Venryx]

This is pretty disappointing. I've spent a good amount of time over the years on various forums, and being able to link freely to relevant information is really helpful.

I don't understand why there is so much fear about people linking to "non-credible sources". If it's a bad source, people can demonstrate that by pointing out its flaws; it doesn't need hand-holding by mods to designate what sources they find acceptable or not.

For example, many people find Wikipedia to be a powerful starting place for understanding a topic, and I agree. I respect that the owners disagree on this, though would urge them to rethink the decision, and ask: even if they don't consider Wikipedia and such reliable, is it really to such an extreme that discussions get *damaged* by it? At worst, I believe it would just not contribute much. And in the absence of a solid danger, censorship tends to just reduce community interaction. I know that on the personal level, sadly, the strict linking policy has reduced my likelihood of engaging here much. (which is a shame since it seems to have quality conversations)

Also, I am sad because they declined my first post, which linked to a page I spent 5+ hours creating specifically for one of the threads, because they said it was self-promotion. :'(

[Empiricist-Bruno]

Venrix, no links are allowed for new people until they have made 10 posts, and this could mean 10 posts in the on topic sections...

[Gertie]

This is pretty disappointing. I've spent a good amount of time over the years on various forums, and being able to link freely to relevant information is really helpful.

I don't understand why there is so much fear about people linking to "non-credible sources". If it's a bad source, people can demonstrate that by pointing out its flaws; it doesn't need hand-holding by mods to designate what sources they find acceptable or not.

For example, many people find Wikipedia to be a powerful starting place for understanding a topic, and I agree. I respect that the owners disagree on this, though would urge them to rethink the decision, and ask: even if they don't consider Wikipedia and such reliable, is it really to such an extreme that discussions get *damaged* by it? At worst, I believe it would just not contribute much. And in the absence of a solid danger, censorship tends to just reduce community interaction. I know that on the personal level, sadly, the strict linking policy has reduced my likelihood of engaging here much. (which is a shame since it seems to have quality conversations)

Also, I am sad because they declined my first post, which linked to a page I spent 5+ hours creating specifically for one of the threads, because they said it was self-promotion. :'(

I agree it's a pain.

Once you grind your way through your first 20 posts, if you can be bothered, it's much looser. After a couple of rejections for annoying reasons I ended up making a lot of short inane posts I wasn't much invested in to get past the 20 post barrier.

[Dennis Blewett]

Scott,

I think your view on Wikipedia is elitist. I have had a Wikipedia handle (a dissociative identity, upon much reflection) since around the year of 2002: I lost the password to it, so I no longer have it. I have been around. Wikipedia is a tertiary source, as the essay claims: It claims to be a source.

Wikipedia has gotten A LOT better than it was back in the early 2000's. I reason if you've been on the Internet long enough like me, then you are aware of such: People are good at adding sources to Wiki pages these days. The TV show, The Colbert Report, did a segment on Wikipedia long ago that did a humorous editorial on some of Wikipedia's issues.

I would like to cite some Wikipedia pages in a thread I would like to create on this forum due to them being where I learned of a philosophical term. I reason I could go find some other philosophy website, but I might not like how they explain the philosophical concept relative to how it is explained on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is nice sometimes with a community making a concept easy to understand (not requiring an elite level of education) relative to a more academic source. I argued your view was elitist. I do not mean to make a personal attack.

I will put some effort into reviewing other sources, but I would like to know your opinion on citing Wikipedia pages, such as Perdurantism, in a thread that I would like to create. I would be citing approximate time and date the webpage was accessed, thus not actually linking to the page: It would be MLA-esque. Wikipedia has a feature to help a person look at a page prior to edits at certain dates and times, an archival feature of sorts: I don't know its extent, though.

Thank you for reading.

[Sy Borg]

Dennis, I have no qualms with members quoting Wikipedia. As you say, the standards are much higher now than when the policy was devised and enforced.

[Dennis Blewett]

Hello, Greta.

Thank you for responding. I would like to cite Wikipedia pages. I will take your response to indirectly mean that I have been given permission to cite Wikipedia pages. I don't need to use a URL.

Here is an example of something I mean to cite:

"Personal identity." Section: No-self theory. Wikipedia. As accessed on February 13th, 2021.

Please let me know if I have misinterpreted you.

[Dennis Blewett]

Please disregard my last post to this thread.

I will consider what you have written, Greta, as implying that I may cite Wikipedia. Again, I will put effort to add a a date and time of access. My last post here did not have a time note as part of the quoted citation. I have not found a satisfactory alternative source to the no-self theory so far, as described in Wikipedia.

[Sy Borg]

No problem with citing Wiki as far as I am concerned, Dennis. There was a time when it was sometimes unreliable, but it has vastly improved since.

[Scott]

The policies from the OP which were posted about 9 years ago do need to be revised and modified, at least since they are not enforced currently.

However, generally speaking, it doesn't make sense to cite Wikipedia since all facts on Wikipedia are supposed to have citations listed, so one can just cite the citation listed on Wikipedia rather than Wikipedia itself.

If the fact on Wikipedia one wants to cite is not cited on Wikipedia, then instead of using Wikipedia as the cited source here, instead one would presumably want to flag the uncited fact as uncited on Wikipedia, so that Wikipedia moderators can find a source to properly cite or remove the uncited rumor.

[Pattern-chaser]

Thanks Scott. I hope to comply. I am pretty sure that I have cited Wikipedia in the past, more than once, however I take note of the forum rule. I must suppose that Wikipedia is a melange nothing of which is attributed to specified authors. I try to confine my links to addresses with 'ed', edu' or 'ac' in them.

Even though Wikipedia is not a source itself, it may (or not) be a useful tool. One who wants to link to a source could presumably look up the information on Wikipedia and find the corresponding reference or link on the Wikipedia page. Although, that assumes Wikipedia is good about enforcing its citation policy.

I remember, soon after Wikipedia emerged, it was the object of much scorn. Then one of the PC magazines tested them out. Specifically — and from memory! — they compared Wikipedia with the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The rather surprising result (to me, at least) was that the former came out on top, offering fewer factual mistakes than the well- and widely-respected E.B.

Perhaps Wikipedia is an example of the wisdom of crowds, being edited by those who are (mostly) without (cited) academic qualifications?

Does anyone know of a more recent evaluation of Wikipedia, and its accuracy? I had a quick look, and found this:

Wikipedia is by far the largest online encyclopedia, and the number of errors it contains is on par with the professional sources even in specialized topics such as biology or medicine. Yet, the academic world is still treating it with great skepticism because of the types of inaccuracies present there, the widespread plagiarism from Wikipedia, and historic biases, as well as jealousy regarding the loss of the knowledge dissemination monopoly. This article argues that it is high time not only to acknowledge Wikipedia's quality but also to start actively promoting its use and development in academia.

I hope it is acceptable, under the newly-clarified forum rules, to post this link, as the source of the above text? It seems appropriate to say where I got the text from, so that others might judge its reliability?