[WikiEN-l] Zero information is preferred to misleading or false information

Thu May 18 17:36:23 UTC 2006

On 5/18/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
...
> This isn't to say that I think *Wikipedia* should work that way.
> After all, Wikipedia has a long history of running completely
> different from that, and a relatively successful history too
> (certainly volume-wise, and the average quality isn't too bad). What
> I'm saying is that providing enough sources to write a decent
> encyclopedia article isn't very hard for any but the most obscure
> subjects, whether you've been to university or not. Providing sources
> for an encyclopedia article that's already written, on the other hand
> - that can be hard or nearly impossible (or even impossible if the
> article is unverifiable).
>
> Anyway, to bring this out of theory and back to reality, is there
> anything I can do with those two references I found on bouchon? Put
> them in the ==References== section, even though no one actually used
> the source? Put them on the talk page? Maybe we need a "notes" page
> which can be organized a little bit better than the talk page.
....
> Anthony

Actually, this runs contrary to my experience. The more obscure a
subject, the easier it is for me to write a decent article
(referencing it heavily) on the subject- simply because it is feasible
for me to read through and absorb a sizeable fraction of the English
literature on it within a few weeks; for my [[Fujiwara no Teika]] and
[[Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity]] articles, I've read at
least a third of the recent English literature on them. Now, it would
be utterly impossible for me to do so on a subject such as [[George W.
Bush]]- I'd still be reading the work of a few years ago decades from
now (to exaggerate a little bit).

~maru