From: "Steve Bennett"
<stevagewp(a)gmail.com>
On 11/30/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006(a)dpbsmith.com> wrote:
From:
"Steve Bennett" <stevagewp(a)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other sources of high-quality information regularly do not cite their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.