[WikiEN-l] Re: Anti-scientific bias has me hopping mad!

Wed Oct 8 20:04:30 UTC 2003

> > the sciences.  It's fairly easy to check the
> atomic weight of silver, 
> > but much harder to refute an assertion that Count
> Leonard III was a 
> > pivotal figure in British tactics used in the 100
> years war.  He's not, 
> > I just made that up, now what do you suppose it
> would take to refute 
> > that?
> 
> But you don't have to refute it.  It isn't necessary
> to prove a
> negative in order to remove something.  All that you
> have to do is say
> something like, in your own delightful wording,
> "moving unsourced
> material to talk pages".  And then put a note on the
> talk page saying
> something like "This is interesting about Count
> Leonard III, however I
> was unable to confirm it.  Can someone post a source
> before we put it
> back in the article?"
> 
> I'm sure that would carry plenty of weight.
> -- Jimbo

That would carry a lot of weight? That's the most
baseless argument I've heard so far, that it's
unsourced. Almost all of Wikipedia is unsourced! If
you have a question about the source, just ask whoever
wrote it. That way, they will be a lot quicker to
respond. I almost never watch articles I write, and if
someone took off some of my content because it's
"unsourced", there's little chance I'd go back and
find it and write the source. If we say that all of
wikipedia must be sourced, it would be very
detrimental to the project. A Google search will
almost always find some reference supporting any fact
in Wikipedia, so long as it isn't made up (if they're
"wrong" or it's a minority view or something, then it
should still be preserved). The only time this doesn't
work is for obscure historical or local stuff.
LDan

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