[WikiEN-l] Citationgate: expertise and verifiability

Sat Sep 30 11:12:16 UTC 2006

On 30 Sep 2006, at 03:09, Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:

> Wikipedia has a unique _requirement_ for very dense references,
> _denser_ than those found in research papers or nonfiction books, so
> it is not surprising that traditional solutions are not perfect for
> Wikipedia, and that we will need to think of better approaches.

We also have more solutions at our disposal.

May preference is to use colour. There are many
possible ways to do this, but one way would be for
sentences to start out light grey, and each independent
editor who approves or disapproves turns it darker and
either more blue or more red. So dark blue would be
strongly supported, dark red would be strongly opposed,
and light grey would be not supported or opposed.

Then uncited claims which were "obviously" true
would soon gain credibility, but contentious claims
would also be obvious.

As has been mentioned, a simple viewing option
could turn everything back to normal.