We want you to enforce WP:CITE but not to use it to delete blocks of
information. Start with something that seems dubious. Ask for a cite,
delete it if neither you nor anyone else can find a source. Don't
jump in and say the whole thing is no good. I did that once at
Kennedy assassination theories. Didn't accomplish much. Still no
decent sources, but a least a notice saying that we ought to find some.
Fred
On Jan 24, 2006, at 11:22 PM, Guettarda wrote:
I have decided to try to clean up the [[List of ethnic
slurs]]
article -
it's a mess of uncited and apparently unverifiable information. In
trying
to get the ball rolling I have been opposed at (almost) every turn
by an
editor whose view of Wikipedia seems to be:
"''Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged
defines
an encyclopedia as 'a work that treats comprehensively all the various
branches of knowledge and that is usually composed of individual
articles
arranged alphabetically'. Thus, in Wikipedia--the largest
encyclopedia ever
created--any knowledge can be included. Stroll by a library reference
section and you will find encyclopedias of agriculture, of
computing, of
'slang,' and so on. This article shows just how much encyclopedic
Wikipedia
is."
I tried to counter this with policy - WP:V, WP:CITE, and "Wikipedia
is not
an indiscriminate collection of nformation" to which I received the
following reply:
"In any case, I'd encourage you not to live your life based on
regulations,
because life is too complicated to regulate. To do so makes one a
[[wiktionary:simpleton|simpleton]]. In any case, regulations must be
interpreted, and the consensus of the Wikipedia community appears
to be that
the rules should not be enforced. Since you are the first editor I
have ever
met to actually try to enforce these rules, you are in uncharted
terrritory,
for sure."
While this editor is relatively new s/he is not a total newbie - s/
he has
over 1300 edits, been editing for several months. While I realise
that WP:V
and WP:CITE tend to only get a lot of attention in content disputes
(the
Intelligent design article being the one where I have seen it most)
the idea
that "the consensus of the Wikipedia community appears to be that
the rules
should not be enforced" just boggles the mind. While this editor
appears to
live at the opposite end of the world from the AFD addicts, I
suspect that
both of these are symptoms of an underlying problem of people who
don't
appear to be here to write a high-quality encyclopaedia. Suddenly
I long to
argue with POV-pushers - I would rather argue the validity of
references
than have someone tell me that consensus is that we don't need
references...
Wow.
Ian
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