Talk:Plaçage

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I added the verify tag because although there are links here, it's not clear which references back up which assertions in the text. There are also a couple of POV-ish sentences there as well. --Deville (Talk) 02:50, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

...'which references back up which assertions'? 'POV-ish sentences'?

I've studied this topic for some time for a novel; I note where I got this information and I get this reception?

Which of the assertions bother you, or is it the whole thing? Honestly...

gab 03:06, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi gab. First, let me be clear; I'm not saying that everything, or even anything, in this article is false. It may all very well be true, and moreover I am sure that you know way more about this subject than I do. In fact, all I know is what I learned in school (I grew up in New Orleans as well), and I'll be the first to admit that that isn't much.
However, the question here isn't truth or falsity of the assertions in the text, it is the verification, or, more specifically, how I personally, or any other reader, would go about checking the assertions made in the text.
I also notice that you're a pretty new user, and that this is one of the articles which you've done a lot of work on. I think this is great, and I certainly think Wikipedia needs contributors like yourself, especially because you clearly know about subjects that I personally don't. But in the light of you being a newish contributor to Wikipedia, let me also say what the "verification" tag means, or, at least, what I think it means. I'm not saying that the article needs to go; if I thought that, I'd have tagged it for deletion, or at least comments. What I'm actually saying when I put this tag is that I didn't feel as though the article satisfied WP:V, and that the article could be improved if it did. You shouldn't think of this tag as criticism, or even community concensus; it is simply my opinion. You have an opinion as well, and yours has as much right to be expressed as mine. In particular, you should feel free to remove the tag if you really think that the article is well-sourced and the sources are well-documented, and of course you certainly have the power to do so. (It's Wikipedia, after all. Just edit the article and remove the tag if you'd like.)
My thinking when I put such a tag is that I'm trying to send a flag, both to the main editors of a page, and to the community at large, that I think the article could be improved to better satisfy WP:V. At the risk of repeating myself too much, let me stress that this {{verify}} tag is in no way meant to be an assertion than anything in the article is false. It is my way of saying that I wouldn't know how to go about verifying the claims in the article, if I wanted. You should feel free to ignore my opinion if you wish, and again you can remove the tag without changing the article at all, if you so wish.
Let me be more specific about what troubled me and why I tagged it. For example, the introduction is seven paragraphs, and something like 50 or so facts are asserted in those seven paragraphs. As far as I can see, nowhere in that text is there a reference to any of the links you have below. In other words, let me pick a sentence at random (and this is completely at random) from the intro: "The plaçage system grew out of a shortage of accessible white women." Now, personally, this certainly seems believable to me, and in fact it seems likely to me that this is true. But let's say I doubted it, or I just wanted to see that someone outside of Wikipedia makes the same claim. Where would I go? It's not clear to me the way the article stands today. Now, of course, it's quite possible that somewhere in those links you have at the bottom, this statement is proven without the shadow of a doubt. But I'd have to read through them myself to find this out, and then I'd have to do this for the 50 or so assertions made in this article. My feeling (and this is shared by the concensus of the Wikipedia community, again see WP:V) is that it is the article editors' job to do this footwork, not the reader's job.
So, in fact, this is why WP:V was invented. If, for example, this article said, "As Morlas states in her thesis, the plaçage system grew out of a shortage of accessible white women. Morlas goes on to prove that . . . ", then in my opinion this would be a much stronger article. Then I could tell myself, "ok, that is a much more reliable fact; it appeared in a PhD thesis and isn't just a random claim from an person on Wikipedia."
As a sort of quick summary of a long (also rambling) story by myself: I'm not attacking the content of the article at all. I am only making comments about the style of writing, and moreover I in no way meant to give the impression that my impression of the article is very negative. I simply think that the article could be improved in some (mostly stylistic) ways, and I just wanted to make that claim. As it stands, it is a good article, and you have put a lot of work into it. With some more work, you could make it a great article.
All in all, it looks like I made you a little mad. Please believe this was not my intention; I was just trying to make, if you like, constructive criticism. My only goal in the time I spend here on Wikipedia is to do my small part towards generating good articles on important topics. (Otherwise, why bother, I'm not getting paid to do this! ;-))Hopefully, this dialogue we've started could contribute to making this article better. --Deville (Talk) 04:31, 24 March 2006 (UTC)