[WikiEN-l] Handling unreferenced but likely-valid material

Thu Nov 30 12:00:31 UTC 2006

> From: "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp at gmail.com>
>
> On 11/30/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
>>> From: "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp at gmail.com>
>>
>>> I don't think deleting accurate, high-quality, unreferenced material
>>> is in Wikipedia's best interests. Asking for a source, yes. Adding
>>> sources, yes. But *deleting* good material? No.
>>
>> Unsourced material is not high-quality material.
>
> I'll interpret that as "Uncited material can by definition never be
> considered 'high-quality material'."

Please don't.

> And then I'll strongly disagree. Newspapers, encyclopaedias and many
> other sources of high-quality information regularly do not cite their
> sources. If we take one of our best featured articles and remove the
> references section, it is still much better than a shorter article
> that does cite its sources. And streets ahead of an article which
> false cites its sources...

What I meant is that _in Wikipedia,_ uncited material is not high- 
quality material.

_In Wikipedia,_ that's indeed by definition, and the "definition" in  
question is Wikipedia's verifiability policy.

The New York Times and the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ don't have such  
a policy.

Uncited material in The New York Times or the _Encyclopaedia  
Britannica_ is high-quality material, because their mechanism for  
insuring quality is different. It involves a web of trust in which I  
trust these sources because I believe the editors make informed  
judgements on the credentials of contributors. It's not 100.000%  
true, but I assume that the Britannica only assigns articles to  
knowledgeable people--not to volunteers who walk in off the street  
attracted by an arch over their entrance that says "Edit this page."  
I assume that the New York Times accepts articles people with  
credentials as "journalists," earned by past performance on  
increasingly important assignments and/or training in a journalism  
school and/or adherence to a code of ethics.

Wikipedia is different, because Wikipedia does not select or judge  
the competence or credentials of its editors.