[WikiEN-l] Requiring sources

Sun Dec 25 03:43:29 UTC 2005

The real issue, of course, is that Xed did not come up with sources for his
claims; instead, he reverted the request for citations multiple times, then
finally inserted links to articles which mentioned none of the contentious
claims for which cites were being asked in the first place.  Some of the
findings even point this out.  The fact that broad Google searches produce
tens of thousands of results is irrelevant, since none of them actually
support the claims being made, and it's certainly not my "responsibility" to
provide evidence for claims which are, in fact, false.  As for "harassment",
it was obviously Xed who was harassing, since he was simply following me
from article to article and reverting me to versions of articles which
contained clearly absurd POV.

The only "game" going on is the "provide bogus sources when asked for cites
and hope no-one bothers to actually read what the links say game, followed
by the cry "no matter what I do they delete my sources" game.

Jay.

On 12/24/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
> My thought (I wrote these) was that they were harassing him. Of
> course he has to provide sources, but so do they. If their purpose is
> to strongly resist any edit which offends their point of view they
> don't feel they need to bother to look the subject up. They can play
> the "provide sources" game. Note that when Xed finally came up with
> some sources they deleted them, not good enough. These folks were
> engaged in game playing. To Viriditas's credit, he kept looking and
> found a really good reference that substantially improved the article.
>
> Fred
>
> On Dec 24, 2005, at 10:03 AM, Jon wrote:
>
> > I've just seen a couple of proposed decisions by the ArbCom that
> > are very worrying from the point of view of making sure Wikipedia
> > has reliable, sourced information.
> >
> >   They are on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> > Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Xed_2/Proposed_decision
> >
> >   The proposals I have difficulty with are as follows:-
> >
> >     3.2.2 Sources demanded  2) After Xed restored, Jayjg demanded
> > sources [6] [7] despite the fact that a simple Google search [8]
> > gives 80,000 hits. He also removed any reference to occupation.
> >
> >
> >   and
> >     3.3.3 Viriditas and Jayjg reminded regarding NPOV  3) Viriditas
> > (talk • contribs) and Jayjg (talk • contribs) are reminded that
> > Wikipedia is a cooperative enterprise which operates by consensus.
> > Masking of POV editing under the guise of citing NPOV and demanding
> > sources is inappropriate
> >
> >
> >   Regarding the first one, I think it is fundamentally important
> > that the onus is on the editor inserting information into an
> > article to provide a source. It's easy to add information - but
> > time-consuming to check it's veracity (particularly if you don't
> > know where it's come from).
> >
> >
> >   Regarding the second one, I don't believe it can ever be wrong to
> > ask for sources for unreference information. Indeed, one good way
> > of NPOV'ing articles is to make sure everything in them is properly
> > sourced.
> >
> >
> >   Taken together these rulings, if passed (and they are in the
> > balance now), could create serious difficulty when dealing with
> > trolls and other disruptive users. User:Troll adds a "fact" in a
> > controversial article. User:Troll then refuses to remove it because
> > other readers can't cite a source disproving it or says it is for
> > others to find the source, but the "fact" should remain, whilst
> > dismissing editors who are even asking him for sources for his
> > edits as being POV warriors and warning them that ArbCom has
> > already found against their position.
> >
> >
> >   Yours concernedly
> >
> >   Jon
> >
> >
> >
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