On 11/30/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006(a)dpbsmith.com> wrote:
From:
"Steve Bennett" <stevagewp(a)gmail.com>
I don't think deleting accurate,
high-quality, unreferenced material
is in Wikipedia's best interests. Asking for a source, yes. Adding
sources, yes. But *deleting* good material? No.
Unsourced material is not high-quality material.
I'll interpret that as "Uncited material can by definition never be
considered 'high-quality material'."
And then I'll strongly disagree. Newspapers, encyclopaedias and many
other sources of high-quality information regularly do not cite their
sources. If we take one of our best featured articles and remove the
references section, it is still much better than a shorter article
that does cite its sources. And streets ahead of an article which
false cites its sources...
Don't get me wrong, citing sources is good - but for us, its primary
use is a defence against nonsense and worse. The sources are a means
to quality, not a form of quality themselves.
Steve