On Mar 31, 2007, at 7:24 PM, Kelly Martin wrote:
On 3/31/07, Phil Sandifer
<Snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote:
1) The idea of an error-free encyclopedia is a
pipe dream. No
sourcing requirements, no matter how onerous, will render us error-
free. Pursuit of an impossible goal at the expense of achievable ones
is foolish.
This is a false dialectic. It's not a binary choice; please stop
presenting it as one. Nobody expects an error-free encyclopedia, but
a lot of us would like one with fewer errors than the one we have now.
Did you actually read the rest of my e-mail? Yes. Obviously we want
to reduce errors. But trying to create iron-clad procedures is just
going to cause more problems. "Let's remove all the unsourced
information/delete all the unsourced articles" isn't an attempt to
reduce error. It's an attempt to eliminate it, and it will backfire
grotesquely.
-Phil