Obviously, what's needed is a middle course. a) Most of the unreferenced material in Wikipedia is accurate. What do I mean by "most?" 90%? 95%? 99%? Something like that. b) Most of the accurate-but-unreferenced material in Wikipedia _could_ be referenced. What do I mean by "most" here? A somewhat smaller percentage, but still "most." And the amount depends on the topic area. Yes, there is a substantial amount of material in Wikipedia that is "original research" or original observation or direct personal experience, backed only by the testimony of the editor that inserted it. But most of Wikipedia's content is verifiable. The editor read it somewhere, even if it was in a classroom years ago or even if he or she doesn't remember exactly where. c) Everything in Wikipedia should eventually be referenced or removed. And by "eventually" I mean in a time frame shorter than the "eventualists." Not like "Possible-Probable, my black hen/She lays eggs in the relative When/She doesn't lay eggs in the positive Now/ Because she's unable to postulate how." But its taken years to put the material into Wikipedia, and it will take a long time to get it referenced. d) So, the unreferenced material should be tagged. That calls the reader's attention to the fact that the material is untraceable, and its accuracy is hard to judge. Equally important, it also calls everyone's attention to the fact that verifiability is policy, and that it is taken seriously. e) Once tagged, there should be no big rush about deleting the material, but it should not remain indefinitely, either. How long? Assuming that there's no specific reason to doubt the material, months and months. The _only_ objections to this I can think of is that that the tags are ugly--which is true but susceptible to a technical fix--or that we are not serious about verifiability and don't truly want to restrict Wikipedia content to things that are supported by published material. It should also be noted that deleted material is not lost or suppressed or destroyed or gone. It's in the history and can be restored at any time if someone finds a reference. And in most cases courtesy suggests copying the unsourced material to the Talk page to call attention to the deletion and to facilitate others in finding references if they want to.