Talk:Orval Hobart Mowrer

Original Research

There's an awful of uncited information in this article. I'm very tempted to just remove it. -- Scarpy (talk) 18:44, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

If you remove it, I'll just stop what I'm doing and leave a ridiculously incomplete article in place until, I suppose, you just remove the whole thing. Everything I put in so far is documented in the references I already gave. The problem is that, so far, I have not gotten the hang of indicating which of the two main references each little detail comes from. How specific do I have to be, when I am only a few sentences away from the original citation? Isn't it clear that I'm still working on the article? This is the first Wkipedia article I have written so it might be nice if you gave me a little slack. Rose bartram (talk) 10:45, 17 July 2008 (UTC)Rose Bartram

Wikipedia:Citing sources lays out more information on how to cite than you ever wanted to know. :) It's not the clearest on when to include the citations, however. As I understand it, if you use one source for an entire paragraph, you can simply tack it on at the end of the paragraph. If there are multiple sources, place the tag in the text when you stop using that reference and begin using another. If you use a reference multiple times, you should name the reference so you can easily refer to it and the article will use the same number every time the reference is used. If you alternate between sources, citing the first source, then the second source, and then the original source again is perfectly acceptable and preferable to being unclear. If you are including any information that does not come from secondary sources, exclude it from the current citation tag. Briefly skimming through the article, your citations look pretty good, though you should conform to one citation style throughout the article (I recommend footnotes, which you have partially been doing). If you have any more questions, feel free to drop me a line on my talk page. Cheers! -—Pie4all88 ^{T C} 22:46, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Maybe I'm beginning to understand

Checked Scarpy's page and I guess I did not realize that s/he has a definite point of view. Could this be why an article whose references are so numerous keeps getting flagged? If Scarpy has in fact read all my references and determined that there are things in my article not found in any of them, wouldn't it be reasonable to let me know what details those are, so that I can provide specific documentation for those details? Rose```` —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.224.118.30 (talk) 17:24, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

It is perfectly fine for an editor to have a point of view; neutral point of view applies only to articles. It is reasonable to ask for User:Scarpy to explain why he readded the template and for him to give a couple of general or specific examples about what else should be cited. You can post that here on this talk page if you like, but it would probably be a good idea to let him know about it by putting a brief message on his talk page. Right now, assume good faith; nearly everyone's goal here is to improve the encyclopedia, and having a citations-needed template put at the top of an article should not normally be considered offensive. -—Pie4all88 ^{T C} 22:46, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Rose - I appreciate that work that you've done on the article. There are large parts of the article where it's not clear what citation is being used for the information, or that uses an inconsistent citation style. For instance, the first paragraph of the first section there is a footnote following some information, and then another sentence and then another three and a half sentences that don't have a clear source:

Mowrer spent his early years on the family farm near Unionville, Missouri. His father retired from farming when Mowrer was six years old and moved the family to Unionville. As Mowrer later recalled,[4] the purpose of the move was to be closer to their large extended family and provide a more broadening environment for Hobart. This idyllic period of his life ended with his father's death when he was 13. At the age of 14 he suffered the first in a series of major depressions which would recur throughout his life.

In other instances, your are using a different citation style, as in the last paragraph of that same section:

The scandal had little impact on Mowrer's career. He left the University without a degree in 1929 (the degree was granted a few years later), entering Johns Hopkins University where he worked under Knight Dunlap. Mowrer's PhD research involved spatial orientation as mediated by vision and the vestibular receptors of the inner ear, using pigeons as subjects. During the Baltimore years he also underwent psychoanalysis for the first time, in an attempt to resolve another episode of depression. After completing his doctorate in 1932 he continued his work on spatial orientation as a post-doctoral fellow at Northwestern University and then Princeton. (Mowrer 1974)

It's not clear which source you are citing here. I was attempting to clean some of this up, but I was having problems finding the books you mentioned on google books and worldcat. ISBNs and OCLCs would help clear some of this up. -- Scarpy (talk) 00:00, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Citation fault-finding

Moved fro my talk page -- Scarpy (talk) 14:12, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh come on, in the electronic age there is no way that the lack of an ISBN number is going to keep someone from finding a book they would otherwise have found. Many of those sources are in fact difficult to find--it took me a month and finally a 2-hour trip to a university library to get the "Counseling Psychologist" articles but I knew they were important and there was no other way. I admit I did not know, and could not figure out, how to re-use a reference number. A kind person clued me in to the trick yesterday, and most of the paragraphs are now specifically referenced. I do think, from what I have read of other articles, that you are using the citation issue as an excuse to maintain control over content. I do not believe this is legitimate. ```` —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rose bartram (talk • contribs) 12:45, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is about verifiability. People should be able to verify the sources used in articles, and where the information in the article comes from.

If you think I'm out of line, I'd encourage you to put in a WP:3O. -- Scarpy (talk) 14:12, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Verifiability is defined as whether a reader "has the ability" to determine that something was previously published by a reliable source. If you are serious about what you are saying here, you believe that any reader who cannot instantaneously, without resort to a brick-and-mortar library, get a copy of the reference to examine, should threaten to wipe out that section of the article unless the contributor comes up with a source more convenient for you. That is what you mean by "having the ability." You don't even believe that you should tell the person what part you plan to erase.

This is a historical article about things that happened 40 to 80 years ago. Mowrer left extensive autobiographical material in a number of different books and articles, and stated that the events of his life were formative in the development of his theories and methods. Yet you are saying that because I can't find you a recent testimonial to the truth of the words of someone 26 years dead, a source that you can read without inconvenience, the article must forever be flagged as unsubstantiated. How does that constitute "assuming good faith"? Do you really believe that Wikipedia is "all about" assuming people are making things up if you can't get your hands on the document easily, or if it was published before books displayed ISBN numbers?Rose bartram (talk) 10:31, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Let me try to clarify. As other editors have pointed out, this is good work for your first article. It looks like you were working on correcting some of the things I pointed out about the citation style and uncited material. So I'm not sure why you removed all of what you added [1], while the 3O is still in queue [2]. I will let you know that it was not my intention with what I wrote on July 16th to sound threatening, but I can see how it could be interpreted that way. I placed the OR template, and later the refimprove template at the top to encourage editors to improve the article -- as you did.

Worldcat indexes more than 10,000 libraries (and includes OCLC numbers for books without ISBNs), Google Scholar indexes most peer-reviewed journals. If it's not easy to find/confirm metadata for a book or article using them, based on the information provided in a reference, then that reference needs to be improved. This is pretty easy for most of your references, but hard to complete them for at least two (e.g. see Worldcat results for Frustration and aggression and Google Scholar results for Rumors of indiscretion).

I've spent over an hour working on this response. I'm not interested in a war of attrition, or or protracted debate on this topic. I don't have an agenda for, or particular interest in, this article. -- Scarpy (talk) 07:36, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Third opinion

It seems that most of the sources are can be verified with relative ease and the problem only arises for a small number of the references used. If another editor has trouble verifying a source, the best step would be to add appropriate reference numbers. If a reference number is unavailable or simply unknown, directing them to a listing (such as on WorldCat or Amazon) or to the place it was acquired from (the specific university library, bookstore, etc.) would allow similar vetting to take place. Vassyana (talk) 20:41, 16 August 2008 (UTC)