[Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE

Wed Nov 30 13:43:05 UTC 2005

On 11/30/05 12:19 AM, "Andrew Lih" <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 11/30/05, Brian <brian0918 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> In light of the recent USA Today article:
>> 
>> In the same way that we are currently enforcing proper image tags using
>> a bot, could we do the same with unsourced articles? Start out by
>> placing {{unsourced}} in all the articles lacking sources, and then, if
>> it is not sourced in a week, create something like the {{copvio}}
>> page-replacer to hide the unsourced content (the entire article),
>> explaining with a detailed message that the article must be thoroughly
>> sourced.
>> 
>> In my mind, at least, it doesn't seem like there should be any
>> difference between enforcing sources for images and sources for
>> articles. If anything we should be enforcing the latter more, since
>> articles form the basis of the encyclopedia. I know this won't solve
>> everything, but I think it should be a vital part of Wikipedia; since we
>> do not know who edits an article, we need to know that it is based on
>> information that we can verify ourselves.
> 
> It's an interesting idea, but it would apply to so many articles on
> such a coarse grained way it may wind up being ignored. Perhaps such a
> function could be tied to the TOC, so that each section would have a
> flag of whether it had been sourced to satisfaction.
> 
> -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
> 

Doubt it would be ignored, you can cite and then be accused of doing
original research, how fun.

I had a cited source for John Dean's article and the minute John Dean cried
about it in his column on Salon.com it was immediately changed anyway.  I
think CITE is a start but it needs to be fleshed out more because even
amongst sources you have varying degrees of reliability.

--Guy (User:Wgfinley, still on Wikibreak because of junk like this)