Phil Sandifer wrote:
Consider this another entry in that time-tested genre
of "obviously
futile suggestions to nuke things that nobody is ever going to nuke,
but probably should anyway" posts. (The classic, of course, being
Nuke AfD. Which we should still do.)
We should nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]. They are not working. They
have never worked. It is not a feasible project to go and add sources
to everything, and new contributors who are editing casually are
never going to be willing to do the extra work of having sources. The
result is a rule where we are always going to be playing catch-up.
Nor do the pages prevent incidents like Siegenthaler, which was a
problem with exactly one cause, which is that nobody had ever
actually looked at that page after it was created. No policy in the
world will fix a page that nobody is editing.
Yes, we need to ensure that people do not add crap information. This
can be covered easily with "Information that people doubt the
validity of should be sourced." And we can then leave the community
to deal with issues on a case by case basis with the direction that
they should be careful to make sure that information is accurate. And
we should shoot people who continue to add dubious information over
the objections of other editors. Which is basically how we wrote an
encyclopedia that has proven pretty trustworthy, and, more to the
point, is how we actually operate now on the vast majority of our
articles, since [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]] are not actually useful pages.
But to have a pair of policies that cannot be honestly implemented
serves only one purpose: causing debates among editors that waste
time and good faith.
Nuke them.
You know, having read this through, I do believe I agree.
Mind you, we do need _something_ to fill the policy vacuum that nuking
them would leave. I think your "Information that people doubt the
validity of should be sourced" is a good starting point. Add to it
"Information that could be libelous if false must be sourced", to cover
the BLP angle, and we're starting to get somewhere.
Of course, this current drive towards sourcing everything to the hilt
does have some positive aspects; we really _could_ use a lot more
sources in a lot of articles. It's just the common sense "the color of
the sky on a clear day does not need sourcing" aspect that is missing.
Of course, reasonably interpreting the current policies also achieves
this goal quite well -- at least until a non-reasonable person shows up.
As for the Seigenthaler incident, I still believe it was and is
fundamentally a technical problem. We simply shouldn't have live
articles that at least two or three established users haven't checked.
Some combination of patrolling and stable versions might do it, although
over time I've started to think more and more that it really needs some
other, truly out-of-the-box solution.
--
Ilmari Karonen