[WikiEN-l] Handling unreferenced but likely-valid

Thu Nov 30 00:25:43 UTC 2006

> From: "James Hare" <messedrocker at gmail.com>
>
> I was thinking of an idea that articles could be trimmed down to  
> what's been
> sourced and the longer (albeit unsourced) article could go to some  
> sort of
> Crappopedia where it awaits confirmation. Stuff that is confirmed  
> with a
> source could be added back. That way, Wikipedia could maintain  
> integrity and
> the other wiki could be a development grounds.

My own suggestion would be:

a) that the reference apparatus should delineate the _range_ of text  
that's being referenced (not just the _end_ of the text that's being  
referenced);

b) that the default display of an article should use a fairly subtle  
difference in color between referenced text (black) and unreferenced  
text (a dark tint of some dark color--perhaps Zune brown to suggest  
"crap"), with of course a user preference to change this.

User preferences could include

a) any color combination, including no distinction between referenced  
and unreferenced (which would also suppress superscripted footnote  
numbers), and

b) hide unreferenced text.

I don't think it's all that hard to imagine solutions, provided what  
we want to do is solve the problem, as opposed to battling between  
the existing unsatisfactory alternatives of deleting unsourced text,  
marking it and deleting it sometime much later, or leaving it in  
forever without any ugly marks in hopes that "eventually" someone  
will source it.