[WikiEN-l] Next experiment: switch off AFD for a month. (was Guardian in defense of Wikipedia)

Tue Dec 13 18:20:28 UTC 2005

On 12/13/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> In my mind verifiable, as used in Wikipedia, implies that it is easily
> verifiable.

I have to disagree, for most applicable meanings of "easily".  I can
verify lots of stuff by going down to my son's college library; if I
cite a review paper in Nature or a graduate-level textbook, odds are
the average joe won't be able to just click on Google and find a
reliable verification, and his local reference library probably won't
carry it.

> If something is asserted without providing any source,
> and a quick good faith effort to find a source fails, I'd say
> verifiability has failed.

Well at the moment we've got some editors openly defending the
practice of deleting without *any* good faith search, so this is an
improvement.

> My latest proposal suggested that articles were merely moved to the
> user namespace, 24 hours after creation, and only after the user was
> notified and a good faith effort to locate a source had failed.

Leaving it in main namespace with a notice is better because the
article may still be useful, and if it's accessible it may be edited
to add references.  I don't see what good is done by moving to a user
namespace.