User:Jaredscribe/Blueify

Having arrived to this project only a few minutes ago, I am baffled by a Wikiquote:Welcome,_newcomers page that tells me what Wikiquote is not, without first telling me what it is, or should be: a source of WQ:Verifiable quotes with WQ:Citations given.

Since those would be the most important WQ:Policies and guidelines to read, why bother reading the so-called them, if they can't even be concisely summarized for newcomers on the Welcome page? Or summarized for people who have reading to do and quotes to write, and don't want to waste their time reading policies?

Against my better judgement, I spent a minute scanning the WQ:Policies and guidelines in anticipation of the edit-wars that are may be launched against me in the interest of w:WP:Status quo stonewalling. (This is likely to happen once I start making substantial contributions, if my experience on our big sister project is any indicator, and I'll need to know them for self-defense.) According to the "Find" tool on my web browser, the page contains not a single instance of the string "verify", "verifiable", "cite", or "citation". Since I'm sure that its buried somewhere and a search of the whole project namespace would yield an article for each, will you all please link them both to somewhere near the top of the welcome and policy pages?

I hate to sound dire, but the situation is unlikely improve without surgery, and the same prognosis holds for the equivalent pages on wikipedia. (A day later, I discover What wikiquote is, and take the time to add these as WQ:Red links. In case that gets reverted by a deletionist, here were the additions: [1], [2] [3]).

Some Rules are to be Ignored

Until then, I intend to WQ:Ignore rules and WQ:Boldly contribute, and I invite all other good-faith contributors to join me, if you're competent enough to simply cite the book and chapter you're quoting from.

w:WP:Ignore all rules is an error of over-generalization and all-or-nothing thinking, and as the fifth pillar of wikipedia, and is itself generally ignored these days by the WikiKnights who run the place, and delight in enforcing rules that sometimes don't even exist. The rules that must be ignored are the ones that stop you from improving project. The "Help" pages that should be ignored are the ones that don't actually help. I don't see why that should still be controversial.

The Five Pillars of Wisdom

We should all be grateful for the w:WP:Five pillars, and intend to uphold them, with this minor caveat and correction. Perhaps subaltern rather than the indefinite: WQ:Ignore some rules, or WQ:Some rules, ignore. None of us should ignore them "ALL" - policies and guidelines, of course. The all-or-nothing misrepresentation, a common type of exaggeration used as a w:Straw man fallacy tends to cause these unnecessary debates, and the problem of crufty essays being written and then cited as if they are policy. This itself an auto-immune disorder to the problem of policy creep. (This critique also applies to corresponding pages of our sister project, of course. I fear that this bad habit is likely to affect other projects and other languages.)

Verifiable quotes from Reliable Sources

"We also want WQ:Wikiquote to become a reliable resource", says the lede sentence, the "common goal" of the PAG page, which I share, but where is the link to WQ:Reliable? And a "free compendium of quotations" is what I too had in mind. Whether or not it is or becomes the "world's largest" is totally irrelevant to me, and I think we should get over this peculiarly American obsession with size, already. But in furtherance of all these goals would be a policy of WQ:Original research needed, (a sort of antidote to the mind-numbing tendencies of the w:WP:NOR when applied over zealously to exclude quotation of WQ:Primary sources. Therefore, WQ:ORN back at you. Although a Quotes project is obviously not a place for w:WP:AEIS, and therefore WQ:NAEIS also appies (No Analysis, Evaluation, Interpretation, or Synthesis), it is most definitely and fundamentally a place for WQ:Original Research in reading and quoting WQ:Primary Sources, especially those from our other sister project Wikisource, which can and should be additionally cited and linked whenever a quote is attributed to a WQ:Secondary source that cites a public domain primary.

Thus, a policy that favors WQ:Scholarly ethics would enable and encourage all our readers and contributors to analyze the quote in context of its primary source text, and also enable them to acquire whatever book, article, or magazine is also quoting it. Once this starts to happen consistently, it will greatly improve the quality of wikipedia. What we need there is scholarly w:Dialectic and better definitions by means of w:Diaresis. And original researchers should be encouraged to contribute on Wikiversity rather than insulted as incompetent and bullied into giving up.

Blueify the redlinks, or don't delete and argue

The thought experiment of my inaugural edit is about to complete when I hit enter, and we'll all find out together how many of these links will be red. Since I probably won't bother to waste any more time by clicking through the blue ones, I invite you all to join in improving those linked policy articles, along with the two I've here criticized, by first clicking through one of the red ones. Feel free to WQ:Cite this mini-WQ:Essay on any policy or guidelines you might be bold to write or rewrite, or on discussion pages thereunto appertaining. I probably won't bother, but will rather continue my far more important work of mining valuable information from WQ:Reliable sources, along with my colleague w:WP:WikiDwarf tribe (see prev version), along with defectors and rebel clans from among the w:WP:WikiElf population who are fed up with the current regime. Beware ye knights and navy, for w:Here be dragons.

I'm not interested in regulating anyone here anymore than I'm interested in listening to what you all have to say, unless you are actively engaged with me to WQ:Make them blue, or as they may someday say on wikipedia, w:WP:Make it blue. This is apparently unique coinage is often found on advice and contentious talk page and village pump discusssions surrounding large scale WQ:Content disputes or questions on the hebrew wikipedia, so I'm going to propose a dedicated article for it there, if there isn't one already. w:he:וק:הכחילו אותו (Content disputes are something I don't anticipate becoming a problem on Wikiquote, thus probably no need for an article dedicated to that, but you never know.) The best way I know of to handle such an event is not to delete, but rather to add - to add as much as possible from all sides of an conflict, hence the necessity of such a guideline. Deletionists should be willing to move w:WP:Disputed content to a subpage, before doubling down, once they are w:WP:Obverted. Thus together we will cooperate and w:WP:Bold-refine.

Is the sky really blue?

Wiktionary cites a poem by s:he:משה גיורא אלימלך as the source for the definition of wikt:he:הכחיל, although its referring to the sky after a storm and a ships weighing anchor at sea.

This provides an interesting contrast to absurd proof often cited on Wikipedia that the w:WP:Sky is blue in the context over debates on its w:WP:Verifiability policy, when everyone who has ever editing at night knows that it is not. Not right now, at least, in my location. I don't know about you, and I don't take your word as proof. Yes, the w:WP:Sky was blue for us both, and yes the w:WP:Sky will be blue again, as we both know, and this is such a well known w:WP:Fact of nature that it need not be cited. I'm sure we could all stipulate to that, but we need a better essay to explain it to newcomers, along with a new or better essay on w:WP:Self-evident truths and matters that are w:WP:Trivially deduced.

Interestingly enough, the quoted poem by w:he:משה גיורא אלימלך makes the very same point (in the third person plural future conjugation, of the verb "to make blue", itself the hifil binyan, the causative construction, of the root that means blue), by predicating of "the clouds" that "the skies" (which are always plural in hebrew, and quite wisely so), will "make them blue". And some volunteer could do that now by translating his article from the hebrew to english with this red link (which due to technical shortcomings of Help:Interwiki linking, incorrectly appears blue along with some of the others linked here from wikipedia): w:Moshe Giora Elimelech.

Regulatory clouds darken the project

I wish that we could be like the skies, and do the same for the clouds of bias and night of omission, and the storms of uninformed discussion and w:WP:Deletion war that make well-waged w:WP:Edit wars sometimes a necessity, the hurricanes of user banning and blocking debates, and the winter fog of confused policies and pointy essays, all of which so often darken the day of wikipedia.

Therefore, WQ:Ignore rules, I insist, and Boldly fulfill the encyclopedic mission of wikipedia and the the quote-compendium mission here.

I can see clearly now, the dark clouds are gone

Insofar as it is, unfortunately, the limit of many peoples knowledge or scholarly research, the metaphor is apt, and it will not be not unfair to say that we who write essays, argue policy, and decide matters in discussion, are its skies. We can cloud and darken the experience of productive editors, especially newcomers, or we can clarify and enlighten, as a blue sky clarifies as cloudy day. Which do you prefer?

As we all should know, w:WP:Wikipedia is not a reliable source. On the contrary, and fortunately for us, WQ:Wikiquote is a reliable source, or should be. At least to the question of what people once said. As for those sources themselves, of course w:Caveat emptor: Let the buyer beware. Who first said that? I hope it will be easy to find out.

Readers First, Writers second, Editors next, wiki-Prosecutors last

And that, colleagues, is why we are here. Not for ourselves as "Editors", but rather for ourselves as "Readers", ultimately as "Knowers". Any "encyclopedia" editor who is not first and primary a reader, but who is willing to delete and fight against constructive contributors, is not much more than a w:WP:Tendentious ignoramus. It is a WQ:No personal attacks#Not personal to critique words and rebuke bad behavior in this way, therefore not prohibited.

Do the Research

All wikipedians should willing to w:WP:Do the research when called upon to do so in a discussion, before arguing or deleting. When offered an uncited quote from an anonymous or intermediate editor, all of should perform due diligence to provide the reference to a quote cited, by learning how to w:WP:Search wikiquote. And we should not tolerate ignoramuses to serve as vandal-fighters or managing editors, to regularly use the undo link in version histories, and to resist accountability by citing "NPA" while accusing productive contributors of "Edit war". Rather we should direct such anti-vandalism fighters and WP:WikiKnights to this essay, or to a help page teaching them V:How to become a wiki-researcher first.

That should be the basis of our WQ:Scholarly ethic: WQ:Readers first.

(Originally published Wikiquote:Village pump#Uh, Thanks for the welcome. Verifiability? Citing Sources?, by Jaredscribe (talk) 04:01, 29 November 2023 (UTC)