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Wikipedia:Peer review/Sea level rise-old/archive1

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I suggest that now is an inppropriate time to be peer-revieing this page, since its in the middle of a fight over the reference format. Any changes made are likely to be lost and/or fragmented. SEW is in the middle of losing the arbcomm case over this (Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Climate_change_dispute_2/Proposed_decision; once its settled out, *then* lets peer review it. Or, SEW could agree to stop pushing his format here. William M. Connolley 09:26, 21 December 2005 (UTC).[reply]


What I did was to restore the embedded links you keep deleting, against WP:CITE. Please edit in accordance with the guideline and stop misrepresenting what it says. SlimVirgin (talk) 19:53, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The article had numbered links before and still has numbered links. I added additional details about sources, following policy WP:V. Please stop ignoring policy. Peer reviers may want to see Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Citation Poll#Q3: Are URL-only citations considered temporary.3F (SEWilco 20:30, 16 December 2005 (UTC))[reply]
Peer reviewers should read WP:V and WP:CITE, which say that embedded links are acceptable as sources (so long as the full citation is given in References). The "poll" mentioned above was started by SEWilco and contains loaded and misleading questions. SlimVirgin (talk) 20:35, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
"(so long as the full citation is given in References)" And there were no full citations. They're now there. I linked to the poll so others can see it for themselves, but they know what WP:V requires. (SEWilco 20:55, 16 December 2005 (UTC))[reply]
Then add the full citation to References. That doesn't involve changing to a footnote system, which is what you keep doing. Please stop being so disingenuous. You're editing against consensus, against policy, and against the relevant guideline, which is why people have filed an RfC and an RfAr against you. SlimVirgin (talk) 22:24, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Adding citations without connecting them to the relevant text? Why? There were numbered footnotes, there now are numbered footnotes. Policy favors citations. Now quit your widespread edit warring and improve the article. (SEWilco 04:03, 17 December 2005 (UTC))[reply]
No, the embedded link connects the citation to the relevant text. A full citation is added to References in case that link dies, so that editors and readers can find it elsewhere. Just as with a footnote. If you would stop for five minutes to think this through, instead of charging full steam ahead like a bull in a china shop, you'd see that embedded links and footnotes, when properly used, add the same amount of information, and that both suffer from the possibility that links may die. The only citation system that doesn't suffer from this is Harvard referencing, where material tends not to be linked, but then that means the material is always harder to find. No citation style is perfect, in other words. And please don't accuse me of edit warring over this. You're the one running the campaign. I have no counter-campaign of my own. I'm just as happy to see footnotes as I am to see embedded links. My only objection is that I don't want to see anyone try to force footnotes on editors who prefer not to use them. SlimVirgin (talk) 07:46, 17 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The fact remains that there were not citations for the URLs, and now there are. If there were simpler tools for editors than WP:FN then I'd use those; I've been encouraging improvements but been preparing for next stages as no good user interface has become apparent (no use my working in MediaWiki source code until there is a design to code). There are reasons WP:FN tried to keep one copy of citation info; you could read its Talk archives or study data structure design. There is less information when the text is not linked to the citation, such as when the URL in text is different from that in the citation. (diff showing cleanup of 404 URLs in text whose correct URL had been in Reference section) When the raw URL is the only connection between the text and citation, the URLs becoming different in those two locations loses information and figuring out which citations go with which pieces of text becomes difficult, made harder because humans have trouble comparing such long strings. (SEWilco 09:47, 17 December 2005 (UTC))[reply]
A Notes section should be used to store all inline citations in, see Wikipedia:Footnotes. Also, the lead need expanding greatly based on the length of the article, the lead should summarize concisely the entire article into one or two paragraphs, see WP:Lead. I'm not too keen on the amount of tables in the article either. Looking good so far, though. — Wackymacs 20:29, 16 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the tables take up a lot of space but so far are the best way to organize the numerous factors. Maybe I should try reducing the table text size to 90% or 80%. (SEWilco 20:32, 16 December 2005 (UTC))[reply]
  • Can the lengthy debate regarding the format of the citations be handled on the article's talk page? While it is a somewhat lengthy article, the section on "past changes in sea level" seems unfortunately short and could stand some expansion. I'd like to see coverage of prior geological epochs. I also see too many bulleted lists in the text: those should either be converted to tables or to prose. Also doesn't the article need to cover deluge events, such as the Black Sea deluge theory and possibly the Mediterranean. Otherwise it's looking good. Thanks. — RJH 22:05, 18 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]