From: Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca>
Daniel P. B. Smith 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.
It can be, depending on the circumstances. This isn't something on
which
categorical statements can be made (or at least one can't expect
anything close to consensus on such statements). For example, consider
the articles where we imported masses of unreferenced material from
the
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. That's not even high quality stuff by
today's standards but it's served as a good foundation for further
work.
Such articles _are_ sourced. They're sourced to the 1911
Encyclopaedia Britannica.
When we source something to _The New York Times_, we don't worry
about whether _The New York Times_ cited _its_ sources. The reader
knows where the material came from: not from an individual editor's
head, but from a specific issue and page of The New York Times. They
can make their judgement about its reliability.
When we source something to the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, the
reader knows it cames, not from an individual editor's head, but from
the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, and they can make their judgement
on its reliability.