User talk:Theonemacduff
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[edit] Welcome to Wikipedia!!!
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[edit] Althusser
Hi I read your comments on the talk of Louis Althusser and I added a bit of the Judt quote to the article. I wondered if you could find Thompson's critque of him online, or a quote or review, or if you have it, as the article mentions his polemic but doesn't explain what his problems with Althusser's work are. special, random, Merkinsmum 22:48, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Why sources should be cited
Good question. I hope the following helps a bit. Wikipedia is by its very nature a work by people with widely different knowledge and skills. The reader needs to be assured that the material within it is reliable: this is especially important where statements are made about controversial issues or living persons. The purpose of citing your sources is:
- To improve the credibility of Wikipedia.
- To avoid claims of plagiarism.
- To show that your edit is not original research and to reduce editorial disputes.
- To ensure that the content of articles can be checked by any reader or editor.
- To help users find additional information on the topic.
- To ensure that material about living persons complies with Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons.
- For how to write citations, see Wikipedia:Citing sources
The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material. All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged should be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation. When content in Wikipedia requires direct substantiation, the established convention is to provide an inline citation to the supporting references. The rationale is that this provides the most direct means to verify whether the content is consistent with the references. Alternative conventions exist, and are acceptable when they provide clear and precise attribution for the article's assertions, but inline citations are considered "best practice" under this rationale. For more details, please consult Wikipedia:Citing_sources#How_to_cite_sources. The source should be cited clearly and precisely to enable readers to find the text that supports the article content in question.
If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it.
Any edit lacking a reliable source may be removed, but editors may object if you remove material without giving them a chance to provide references. If you want to request a source for an unsourced statement, consider moving it to the talk page. Alternatively, you may tag a sentence by adding the {{fact}} template, a section with {{unreferencedsection}}, or the article with {{refimprove}} or {{unreferenced}}. Use the edit summary to give an explanation of your edit. You may also leave a note on the talk page or an invisible HTML comment on the article page.
Do not leave unsourced information in articles about living persons. As Jimmy Wales has put it:
I can NOT emphasize this enough. There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons.
–Jimmy Wales [1]
