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

Thu Nov 30 18:13:36 UTC 2006

Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
>> From: "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp at gmail.com>
>> On 11/30/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
>>     
>>> What I meant is that _in Wikipedia,_ uncited material is not high-
>>> quality material.
>>>       
>> What do you mean by "high quality"?
>>     
>
> Well, according to the verifiability policy, content is _not supposed  
> to go into Wikipedia at all_ unless it's sourced.
>
> I'd say that content that isn't supposed to be in Wikipedia at all  
> can hardly be considered to be "high quality" _for Wikipedia_.
>
> That's going to be my last reply, as it seems to me that basically  
> you do not agree with the verifiability policy.
>   

The verifiability policy has never been a hardline policy, but a 
guideline and something to aim towards.  When it was first adopted, 
nobody thought it meant that we should summarily delete the 80%+ of the 
encyclopedia that at the time was unsourced.  Instead what it meant was 
that we should begin going through and adding sources to it.

In general some amount of common sense is required.  Claims that are 
almost certainly true but uncited should be left in and have a citation 
supplied---this is what the {{fact}} tag is for.  Claims that are 
surprising or unlikely should be removed or moved to the talk page, 
pending some verification that they actually are true.  Claims that are 
negative claims about a living individual should be treated in the 
second manner by default.  We wouldn't have a living-persons policy, a 
{{fact}} template, or any number of other such things if our 
verifiability policy were that all unsourced statements should be 
summarily deleted.

-Mark