[WikiEN-l] Verifiability

Tue Dec 13 19:39:54 UTC 2005

  Is there any reason why we don’t introduce immediately a rule that says all new information added to an article must be sourced or referenced or the edit will automatically be reverted? And any new articles must be sourced or referenced within two hours, say, of their creation, or will be speedily deleted?

  Unsourced information has no place on the encyclopaedia, and the person introducing the information is best placed to know where he got it from. OK, this idea is not a panacea - it doesn’t help reference up information already in the encyclopaedia, but it’d stop making the problem worse. Nor would it address the issue of editors making up false sources - but any regular editor doing that will soon be rumbled, and this issue is already around anyway. 

  Editors would soon get used to the new requirement - and it’d have the benefit of making all those RC and New Pages patrollers who currently do not improve the encyclopaedia one jot (they merely prevent it from degrading) actually help improve the project by enforcing proper standards.

  Ideally [[Wikipedia:Verifiability]] and [[Wikipedia:Cite sources]] would undergo a quick re-write to explain better how sources can be given, but that can easily be done.
  This idea would start to improve our quality immediately, and make a Siegenthaler repeat far less likely. Why not go for it?

  Jon (jguk)

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