On 12/11/05, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
In my opinion it is never acceptable to keep false
information in the
article namespace. There are places where eventualism is acceptable,
but presenting false information as true information is not one of
them.
Known to be false information, yes. Unverified information is another
beast---a large proportion of our mathematical articles are currently
unreferenced, but almost certainly correct (and can be easily verified
by anyone knowledgeable in the field, or with access to an intro-level
textbook).
If it's an unverified half-sentence stub, perhaps we don't lose much by
simply deleting it. If it's a good article that just needs some
references added, though, we move backwards by deleting it and forcing
someone later to start from scratch.
-Mark
Well, I think I've made it abundantly clear I disagree. Those
mathematical articles should all be referenced. The person who is in
the best position to do that is the original author. Sure, we can
grandfather these old ones in, but going forward I don't see why we
can't just put in this information from the beginning. (And no, if
you make it optional, people aren't going to do it.)
Articles can always be undeleted. "Forcing someone" to drop a note on
an admin page that you'd like a particular article undeleted so you
can add references to it is just not that significant (especially
compared to sitting on AFD for 5 days). And like I said before, I'd
prefer that anyone can see this deleted text without bugging an admin
anyway.
Anthony