Template talk:needsources

RFDO discussion: August–September 2015
There is no consensus on this process, as is clear from the various discussions that have occurred in the past, and that are still occurring today. User:Pereru is adding this to all kinds of entries to satisfy his personal need for sources, not Wiktionary's. —CodeCat 01:33, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 *  strongly oppose. Sources are as necessary to protoforms as usage examples are necessary to make sure words were not made up. How do we know a protoform was not just invented by the author of the page on the spur of the moment? CodeCat, for some reason, seems not to like sources; I say avoiding sources cannot be an acceptable procedure in any dictionary that wants its etymologies to be trustworthy. --Pereru (talk) 01:44, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Trustworthiness comes from them making sense, not because we parroted the views of someone else who said so. Review and editing by other editors is the only thing that can produce reliable etymologies, I don't see how citing a source magically makes the etymology more sensible. People have published pretty rediculous ideas, much crazier than something the most experienced Wiktionary etymology editors would come up with. Wiktionary has always been opposed to appeal to authority, why should this be an exception? Aside from all that, there still needs to be a consensus on policies that would govern the use of this template. Right now anyone can stick it on a page and anyone else can remove it again. —CodeCat 01:51, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * If you are not the author of the form, then you ARE "parroting" someone: the author (in the trade, this is called 'citing'). Why complain about something that you yourself are doing? And you must believe the sources you're using are good, or else why would you use them? If, on the other hand, you are the author of a given reconstruction, then say so, and state your reasons. "Trustworthyness" is NOT helped by hiding the process whereby you came to the conclusion that this specific protoform deserved its own page -- much the opposite, especially for non-specialist readers. "Making sense" is something that needs to be argued for, and not in a discussion several years ago that nobody is going to go through the archives to find -- copy it to the page itself. Or place it in the talk page. This will be the source, if you're the author. Now, if you're not the author, then you did not create that reconstruction yourself, you simply saw it somewhere; it should then be a simple matter to copy the title of the source where you saw it and the name of its author to the page you created . Why not do it? Can you present a single argument in favor of hiding the name of the person who proposed the form -- especially when YOU think the form is right, since you created a page for it? To me, that is more than simple courtesy; if you don't say who made the claim, you're not giving him/her credit, i.e. you're simply stealing that person's ideas. Which is, you know, not ethical.--Pereru (talk) 02:32, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree on the need for a procedure; but it simply seemed to me pretty straightforward. If you see a reconstructed entry without a source, tag it. When a source is added, remove the tag. If someone doesn't do it this way, s/he is doing it wrong. Or would you suggest something else? --Pereru (talk) 02:38, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I think demanding the deletion of this template because someone is adding it to entries without waiting for consensus is a bit much, especially since you routinely do the same (Dan would probably find some way to make it sound like you were inscribing the Mark Of The Beast on people's foreheads and sending tanks to seize parliament, but that's just Dan).
 * Not that I agree with rushing this out while in the middle of a heated argument. Such things are best done after things have cooled down and other opinions have been heard. I think the best course of action is to keep the template for the time being, but to hash out all the issues and to come to a consensus before putting the template in its final form and adding it to entries. Chuck Entz (talk) 05:52, 8 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Oppose. I'm not sure if I should even add anything, this nom seems a bit ridic., the template is a great idea, imo, I agree with Pereru that I don't see any controversy in how it should be implemented – something is unsourced, a person would like sources (for whatever reason, it's no one's business to try to do psychoanalysis on them or make up conspiracy theories what might be their "hidden agenda" for requesting sources, I mean come on...) and said person simply adds the template. The only thing I see as meriting discussion is the exact wording, perhaps the template could be made more general to be used in Mainspace as well...? (Or does RFV already cover all of Mainspace, not just the attestation of the lemma, I'm not sure?)


 * I have never understood CC's trail of thought in this regard (like her bizarre dislike(?) of easily accessible online resources like Etümoloogiasõnaraamat), one thing I can tell you there have already been a bunch of times in my current little Uralic project where I'm simply not linking to a Uralic etyl appendix because it simply has no sources, all I'm left with is hope that User:Tropylium will add sources at some point. I'm not equipped to speculate what Pereru might or might not plan to do, but English Wiktionary is probably the #1 most comprehensive, multi-faceted resource on Latvian at this point, what if Pereru's potential Uralic project approaches that, something tells me that he feels similarly to me in regards to completely unreferenced etyl appendices and would assume a general policy of simply ignoring them which is such a tremendous waste of human resources/time (the time that CC took to put those app's together.) Such a template is an attempt at communication, I don't see how obstructing communication is in any way beneficial. Neitrāls vārds (talk) 07:26, 8 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep this template or similar. Readd the template to Appendix:Proto-Indo-European/wed-, Appendix:Proto-Indo-European/álteros, Appendix:Proto-Indo-European/ánteros and the like. Note that the template does not require deletion of the page, merely points out that sources are missing. Start removing CodeCat's original research from etymologies and reconstructions. --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:09, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * How do you know it is original research? --Pereru (talk)
 * Fair point. Note, however, that CodeCat does not post their sources in their edit summaries, nor anywhere lese, so original research is likely, especially given that they publically advocate use of original research in etymologies and reconstructions. I have seen CodeCat change, with no edit summary, etymologies entered by other people. When that happened, I did not know what to do; from what I recall, I gave up and did not revert. --Dan Polansky (talk) 11:10, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep but tone it down in both size and rhetoric, to something approximating rfv-sense in both size and direness. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 10:31, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep. Why delete the template just because there is not yet a consensus? Should authoring and deploying such a template be a privilege limited only to cognoscenti?
 * If the problem is with a lack of policy about its use, then the forum is WT:BP, not this relatively underwatched venue. This has the look to venue-shopping, analogous to moving as many template features as possible to Module space. See . DCDuring TALK 11:48, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * One question: is there really a lack of policy on the topic, since both Etymology and Reconstructed_terms mention the need for good sources? --Pereru (talk) 18:40, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep a template, per Neitrāls vārds, though toned down per Angr; in particular, get rid of the suggestion that sources need to "claim this exact form", per the BP discussions going on at the moment (where there seems to be consensus that standardization of notation, for instance, is good). - -sche (discuss) 17:44, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep either as a smaller inline template or with toned-down wording. A boilerplate is too much of a blunt tool for requesting individual references; and if someone's concerned about a complete lack of sources, something along the lines of w:Template:Unreferenced would be preferrable. --Tropylium (talk) 18:35, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * But we haven't even established that a lack of sources is a bad thing. This is just the opinion of some people. But as I argued in the BP, it goes too far to require sourcing for every single piece of etymological information. So it should always be necessary to specify which pieces information are missing a source. Another point that has not been addressed is, what if there is no external source for the information? There is, again, no policy or procedure for deleting information not sourced to someone else. Most information on Wiktionary is sourced to Wiktionary, per WT:CFI. For unattested terms, there are no established rules, and the current practice is to mix external sourcing with editorial review and consensus, just like anywhere else on Wiktionary. —CodeCat 19:04, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I disagree -- I think we have, since you even agreed that sourcing (including mentioning yourself/Wiktionary as the author and giving the reasoning behind a certain choice of form) is a good thing in the BP discussion on this template. A lack of sources is not a deleting offense -- it's like a lack of inflection tables: it should simply be fixed. Which is what this template is for. This is not just "some people's opinion": an entry with an inflection table is indeed better than one without one, if the word in question does indeed have inflections. Likewise, a reconstructed entry with sources (= either external sources or the Wiktionary-internal rationale) is better than one without, because it allows the interested reader to judge the form better. All good etymological dictionaries do this; why shouldn't Wiktionary? Again, this template is not for deleting (where did you get that?): it's for tagging entries that don't have sources, just like tags entries that don't have inflection tables. If people think the tone is too strong, it can be toned down; but its usefulness is obivous: it creates a category with all unsourced entries so that interested people like you can go about adding sources (again, not just external sources: also rationales and explanations for why this form is there rather than some other form). --Pereru (talk) 20:59, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, we don't have to establish sourcelessness as "bad", only as less preferrable as having at least some sources. I have seen no argument for what harm do sources do, so this really should be a shoo-in.
 * As for low-level original research that an editor expects to be truly novel (not merely unsourced but also unsourceable), an explanation in footnotes should probably suffice. This is what published papers do for minor etymological observations all the time: "A previously unnoted reflex of Proto-Fooic *zark is North Fooian zorg"; or "Droopy Fooian blop and Loopy Fooian blep can be connected as Proto-Fooic *blöp"; with no further argument required as long as the sound correspondences and the semantics work out well enough. (Only if they don't, would I be concerned about including an etymology in Wiktionary in the first place.) --Tropylium (talk) 21:26, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Keep, but tone it down. --Vahag (talk) 14:17, 9 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I've just toned down the template, so that it resembles Wikipedia w:Template:Unreferenced (offering the additional option of marking something as original research). It seems that the verdict here is 'keep'. If nothing changes, in a couple of days I'll removed the template and start adding it to PIE entries that have no sources or OR tags.--Pereru (talk) 19:46, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * If we're going to include the term "original research" in templates, then we should at least have a page that descibes what it means and what our policy on it is. It would be especially good for Wikipedians who are used to Wikipedia's policy. —CodeCat 20:25, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Yeah, we should come up with a better, more neutral descriptor just to avoid that one which is loaded by Wikipedia's strident stance on it. Perhaps (for a wording to put on own-research entries) simply "This reconstruction has been deduced according to the sound correspondances [etc] described in WT:About Proto-Germanic." That page would then cite rules for reconstructing proto-forms, with references, which would serve as the "reliable sources" needsources asked for. (Omitted/excluded by such an approach would be any completely-original research, where a Wiktionarian posited their own sound correspondences etc without references, and proceeded to reconstruct proto-forms from those all by themselves.) - -sche (discuss) 20:48, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Just reading this template, without editing here in months, I can see it's a reaction to CodeCat's original research. We do have and I'd be tempted to add a  to it instead of creating an entirely new template, but of course we do need something so either this template or an edit to . Renard Migrant (talk) 18:01, 18 August 2015 (UTC)


 * RFDO kept per alc of consensus for deletion or even consensus for keeping. --Dan Polansky (talk) 13:29, 20 September 2015 (UTC)