[WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 27, Issue 10

Tue Oct 4 18:41:46 UTC 2005

actionforum at comcast.net wrote:

>>Tony Sidaway wrote: 
>>    
>>
>>>On 10/3/05, Michael Turley wrote: 
>>>      
>>>
>>>>Anyone have any good ideas of how better to encourage people to cite 
>>>>sources? 
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>Make verifiability a key policy, and egregious edit-warring to insert 
>>>unsourced statements a blockable offence. 
>>>      
>>>
>>Great idea! 
>>    
>>
>This would swing the balance too far in favor of the deletionists.  The unsourced statement would have to be unreasonable.  Obvious common knowledge statements should not have to be sourced, and someone edit warring, demanding that every petty statement be sourced is being unreasonable, and should not be rewarded by being allowed to impose a burden upon other editors.
>
Not at all. The deletionists tend to argue on the basis of notability.  
I prefer to avoid the question of whether a statement is reasonable; 
that's just too subjective.  While a person could put in "obvious common 
knowledge statements" without initially showing a source they could and 
should still be open to challenge.  There is nothing wrong with having 
one or two "standard works" as reference to cover the essentials of the 
subject.  Thus an article about physics could, through the category page 
show references to the standard works.  The individuals who make 
unreasonable demands should be dealt with separately.  Major policy 
directions should not be held at the mercy of a handful of extremists.  
The responsibility of an editor to search for sources could then be 
limited to those standard sources.

Ec