Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2012-10/Quality of sources

Quality of sources
This proposal has a main part and an optional part for which there are two separate options.

Add to Attestation section following Conveying meaning subsection:

In Attestation section replace:

with:

Add to Spanning at least a year subsection:

Optional part
Replace:

with:

Add to Number of citations subsection:

Add to Spanning at least a year subsection:


 * Rationale: A previous vote for allowing WebCite as a source failed (but only just), partly because of concerns over the quality of citations that might result. As there is nothing in the CFI that explicitly addresses quality this concern was justified.  This proposal seeks to add a quality clause into the CFI and, having addressed that issue, to reintroduce the idea of internet-archived citations.  The extended requirements for internet-only sources has been broken out into a separate optional vote.
 * Rationale of previous proposal: WebCite archive is now well established and widely used by academics and publishers. The site has only ever taken down a handful of pages ("around 20 out of several million records" according to Dr. Eysenbach, founder of WebCite) and even those are still available for inspection on an individual basis. The site can now be considered "durably archived", but nevertheless, it is proposed that a greater number of citations be required, for safety's sake.


 * Vote starts: 00.01 30 October 2012
 * Vote ends: 23:59 29 November 2012


 * Vote created: Spinning Spark ''' 18:47, 23 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Discussion:
 * [[Image:Wikt rei-artur3.svg|20px]] Wiktionary_talk:Votes/pl-2012-10/Quality_of_sources
 * [[Image:Wikt rei-artur3.svg|20px]] Beer parlour
 * [[Image:Wikt rei-artur3.svg|20px]] Wiktionary talk:Votes/pl-2012-08/Citations from WebCite
 * [[Image:Wikt rei-artur3.svg|20px]] Votes/pl-2012-08/Citations from WebCite

Support main proposal

 * 1) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support, as nominator. Spinning Spark ''' 08:31, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * 2) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support. — Ungoliant (Falai) 08:39, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * 3) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support  12:14, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * 4) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support. —Ruakh TALK Below, Ƿidsiþ raises a good point — and I would support a small change to address it — but even without such a change, I don't think this is a problem. The proposal does not introduce any specific rules that would require any specific cites to be rejected; rather, it merely notes the general principle that some cites are of better quality than others. (Actually, come to think of it, a bigger problem is that it never even mentions the possibility that a cite could be rejected for this reason. It invites arguments along the lines of, "Well, §'Quality of sources' says these three sources are 'best avoided', but they're our only three sources for this word, so we don't have a choice: we have to use them.") —Ruakh TALK 14:04, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * 5) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 15:10, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
 * 6) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support Quality & Durability of sources, although I would have preferred different wording on the first to emphasize that spelling is not strongly supported but existence is (if that makes any sense). [[Image:Symbol oppose vote.svg|20px]] Oppose addition to Spanning at least a year, unless other archives are added, in which case it's tolerable if a bit verbose. [[Image:Symbol oppose vote.svg|20px]] Oppose including WebCite without a separate vote. In the future, it would be easier to make several votes out of these, and be patient to determine the results of one before expanding on it with another. DAVilla 06:11, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Oppose main proposal

 * 1) [[Image:Symbol oppose vote.svg|20px]] Oppose  Ƿidsiþ 08:45, 30 October 2012 (UTC) The change to "Attestation" I like, but I have to oppose this because of the "Quality of Sources" section which appears to leave older works in a tough position. If it began "Those mdoern sources which..." or something I could support, but as it is it seems to leave no backing for historical sources with variant spellings -- it's also far from clear what kind of "review process" anything older than a couple of hundreds years ago went through, but I wouldn't want to exclude them. Ƿidsiþ 08:45, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Shame you didn't raise that point before the vote went live so it could be incorporated. Spinning Spark ''' 11:27, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * The problem with your amendment is that the period of normalization begins at drastically different times for different lects in different places. Using words like "modern" and "historical" seems to ignore works that are relatively recent, but reflect an outdated standard (for example, in Yiddish or Tongan). —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 15:15, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
 * 1) [[Image:Symbol oppose vote.svg|20px]] Oppose  Dan Polansky (talk) 09:41, 4 November 2012 (UTC) The "Quality of sources" section does not state any necessary quality conditions the source must meet. It speaks in terms of "best avoided" and of some sources being "given more credence" than other sources. By doing so, it does not rule out "sources which contain spelling, grammatical, or syntactical errors". Thus, it allows quotations from WebCite without truly requiring that they be free from careless mistakes. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:41, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
 * 2) [[Image:Symbol oppose vote.svg|20px]] Oppose  Liliana • 18:49, 12 November 2012 (UTC) not again
 * 3) [[Image:Symbol oppose vote.svg|20px]] Oppose WebCite lacks true archive diversity. It seems to be a single set of servers. Contrast that with Usenet and the worldwide large depository and university libraries of paper documents. DCDuring TALK  22:39, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Support increasing number of citations

 * 1) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support for Webcite. — Ungoliant (Falai) 08:39, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * 2) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support Ƿidsiþ 08:46, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * 3) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support, I think. —Ruakh TALK 14:06, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * 4) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 15:08, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
 * 5) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support Dan Polansky (talk) 14:11, 10 November 2012 (UTC) If the main proposal passes, I support counting an internet-only citation as 0.5 citations for attestation. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:11, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

Oppose increasing number of citations

 * 1) [[Image:Symbol oppose vote.svg|20px]] Oppose  Spinning Spark  08:37, 30 October 2012 (UTC).  I believe the quality requirement and increase in timespan will be sufficient protection.  Too high a number of cites will discourage useful contributions. Spinning Spark  08:37, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * 2) [[Image:Symbol oppose vote.svg|20px]] Oppose for Usenet. — Ungoliant (Falai) 08:39, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * 3) [[Image:Symbol oppose vote.svg|20px]] Oppose   12:14, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * 4) [[Image:Symbol oppose vote.svg|20px]] Oppose especially for Usenet. I think diversity of archives is more helpful than number of citations. Books, newspapers, and journals are archived in many libraries (and online). WebCite material seems singly archived. I do not think that 6 or 600 WebCite quotations are as good as three book citations. DCDuring TALK  22:30, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * 5) [[Image:Symbol oppose vote.svg|20px]] Oppose. We need to be certain about the durability of the sources. Adding more work for ourselves does not do that. DAVilla 06:13, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Support increasing time span

 * 1) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support, <font style="background:#fafad2;color:#C08000">Spinning <font style="color:#4840a0">Spark ''' 08:31, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * 2) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support. — Ungoliant (Falai) 08:39, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * 3) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support Ƿidsiþ 08:46, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * 4) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support. —Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 14:08, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * 5) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support Dan Polansky (talk) 14:11, 10 November 2012 (UTC) If the main proposal passes, I support increasing time span for internet-only citations. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:11, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
 * 6) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support - -sche (discuss) 22:47, 19 November 2012 (UTC) (if the main proposal passes)
 * 7) [[Image:Symbol support vote.svg|20px]] Support regardless of what else passes. DAVilla 06:22, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Oppose increasing time span

 * 1) [[Image:Symbol oppose vote.svg|20px]] Oppose   12:15, 30 October 2012 (UTC) As this makes it much harder for us to cover internet slang.
 * 2) [[Image:Symbol oppose vote.svg|20px]] Oppose  —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 15:07, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
 * 3) [[Image:Symbol oppose vote.svg|20px]] Oppose I think we benefit from being topical if possible. DCDuring TALK  22:20, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Decision
Unless someone objects:


 * The "main part" fails, 5–4–0 (55.6% to 44.4%), for lack of consensus.
 * I'm rejecting DAVilla's vote as invalid: although it's in the "support" section, it's actually trying to be a support-in-part,-oppose-in-part. That's invalid in general, since all of the "support" voters are implicitly saying "I support this proposal as a whole", i.e. "I support each part of this proposal provided all the other parts pass as well". We could quibble over whether it should be allowed in this specific case, but IMHO it's not worth having that discussion, given that even if we did allow it, the part that he supported would still only be supported by a 6–4–0 (60% to 40%) majority, which is not clear consensus.
 * The first "option" (increasing the number of citations required for online-only cites) fails, 4–5–1 (44.4% to 55.6%).
 * I'm counting Dan Polansky's conditional "support" vote as an abstention, because its precondition was not met, and it did not specifically say that it should be read as an "oppose" vote in that case.
 * The second "option" (increasing the time-span required for online-only cites) fails, 5–3–2 (62.5% to 37.5%), for lack of consensus.
 * I'm counting Dan Polansky's and -sche's conditional "support" votes as abstentions, because their precondition was not met, and they did not specifically say that they should be read as "oppose" votes in that case.
 * I think 62.5% is in the range that's up to the discretion of the person closing the vote. I'm using that discretion to speculate that one or more of the not-explicitly-marked-as-conditional votes was probably, nonetheless, cast conditionally. After all, the vote description labels this as an "option" tacked onto a "main part", and that main part did not pass; one vote is explicitly marked as unconditional, but no others are, and the context seems to make conditionality the implicit default (even if no one really thought about it consciously until Dan Polansky's vote).

(If anyone does object to any of the above, please leave a comment.)

—Ruakh <i >TALK</i > 02:32, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
 * And if I don't object? :) 03:58, 3 December 2012 (UTC)