Talk:Rudolph Hall

Citations needed

There is an incipient edit war brewing as to whether citations are needed for factual assertions that are not common knowledge. Ɱ (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) maintains that only dubious statements should be flagged as "citation needed" and anyone who wants a reference should find it him/herself. I (Piledhigheranddeeper (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)) maintain that the standard is not "can a reference be found somewhere" but "is it cited", and that the person who makes an assertion is the one primarily responsible for including a citation. Ɱ thinks that's tag-bombing.

I do think that "The renewed structure will restore the rooftop penthouse, a dismantled student lounge, and previously destroyed bridges and will be adjoined to a new Art History department." is not common knowledge. Indeed, it is likely either OR or obtained from somewhere, which should be cited to avoid plagiarism. Or is it common knowledge (not just among architecture buffs)? Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 18:56, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

I think the two CN tags are appropriate. The uncited statements are far from common knowledge, yet plausible enough to stay in the article with CN tags. PRRfan (talk) 20:10, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Where do you get this idea about common knowledge? That wasn't my rationale. You are not supposed to tag-bomb random uncited statements, just the ones that seem dubious. Are you calling into question the WP:Verifiability of the material? ɱ (talk) 20:16, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

To quote the "Verifiability" page, "verifiability means other people using the encyclopedia can check that the information comes from a reliable source." The best way to show that is to provide the source.

Wikipedia:Verifiability#Responsibility_for_providing_citations notes that "The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material, and it is satisfied by providing an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the contribution." (boldface added). This means that it's job of the person who added the text to include a citation. A person who adds a "citation needed" flag is simply asking the original person to do this job. Or another person could do it. It's not an insult, nor an aspersion on the text, just a request for a cite. JingleJim (talk) 20:40, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

This is so well-put that I'm copying it to my list of "Model wiki-interactions". PRRfan (talk) 20:48, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Regardless of the burden, it's a misuse of the CN tag. It's not meant to just randomly tag-bomb things you wanna see a [1] next to. It's for content you can actively question as dubious and need to see a source to verify. ɱ (talk) 22:25, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

After a bit of cleanup (punc, wording), some reorganization, and the addition of a dozen or so facts, I felt bold enough to replace one uncited sentence (about features of the renovation) with a cited one about an accompanying addition, and remove the uncited sentence about other firms commissioned for renovations because I could find no evidence to support it. PRRfan (talk) 02:54, 2 February 2023 (UTC)