[Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE the Soi case

Fri Dec 2 23:48:05 UTC 2005

Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> I will tell you why we are different. We are different because we are 
> not a professionally produced publication. We do not have the pretence 
> that we know it all. We invite everyone to contribute and these other 
> publications do not. When you, and here I repeat myself, do not care 
> for the people who have never cited anything and make them out to be 
> wrong as a consequence, you do not understand why we are different. 

This is absolutely fundamental to what we are doing!

> Again, citations have their place but do not quote your sources 
> relating subjects like religion because they are all hopelessly point 
> of view. The only thing you can achieve there is that you show that 
> someone published a point of view. Citations and sources are a double 
> edged sword, they either allow you to clear up disputes or they allow 
> you to destroy what differentiates Wikipedia from these "normal 
> published textbooks, including encyclopaedias". 

In other words citations should be used to help the reader make up his 
own mind, not as tools for making up his mind for him.

>> Jim wrote:
>>
>>> The policy says: "The goal of Wikipedia is to become a complete and 
>>> reliable
>>> encyclopedia. Verifiability is the key to becoming a reliable 
>>> resource, so
>>> editors should cite credible
>>> sources<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cite_sources>so that
>>> their edits can be easily verified by readers and other editors."
>>
Sometimes this kind of debate seems to be between those who understand 
rules without reading them and those who read rules without 
understanding them.

Ec