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

Sat Dec 3 22:58:11 UTC 2005

Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>Now here is the rub, when you insist that all our articles need to 
>>provide sources, you will lose our stubs. You will make the composition 
>>of the content different. When you only consider only the English or the 
>>German language wikipedia you may be of the opinion that it has enough 
>>content. For projects that are in its infancy like the Swahili Wikipedia 
>>it would be a killer. It would be a killer because we do not have the 
>>vibrant community that we wish for it.
>>    
>>
>Smaller language versions of Wikipedia need to emphasize growth over quality, true. But larger
>language version (not projects! Wikipedia itself is a project) do not and would be greatly
>improved by requiring sources. 
>
Source citations must eventually apply to all projects.  It's just a 
matter of when or at what stage it is introduced.

>>It is indeed great to strive to be better than other encyclopaedias. 
>>There biggest achievement is in the relevancy that they had in the past. 
>>Encyclopaedias were the embodiment of knowledge. Many people grew up 
>>with them and acquired knowledge that way. Wikipedia is young and its 
>>relevancy is something that can only be judged in the future. 
>>    
>>
>And yet many millions of people are using the larger language versions of Wikipedia as reference
>sources RIGHT NOW. We have a responsibility to do what we can to increase the chances of actually
>serving them accurate content. Creating a culture of sourcing material to good references in the
>larger language versions of Wikipedia will help a great deal in that regard. 
>
A sourcing culture is good, but it must not become a culture of panic 
that requires every little bit to be sourced immediately.

Ec