You're reading a bit more into my words than I
ever intended, but I'll lay
off on the idealistic "we". I don't think Wikipedia is healthier without
sourcing, but I'll allow for disagreement there. What we're dealing with
is
a conflict of visions of what Wikipedia ought to be. Do we strive for
completeness and inclusiveness or for better sourcing and higher quality
coverage? I identify more with the drive for quality, and I'm comfortable
looking elsewhere for certain topics, which can't be covered in the way I
think Wikipedia should.
I think a half-loaf is, for most purposes, better than no loaf at all. If an
article is sourceable, then it should be. It may be that there are no
"reliable" sources on an article, despite honest efforts. There are some
topics that are just not covered by the subset of sources that have been
defined as universally reliable. If Wikipedians are able to look for
themselves from the "unreliable" sources and judge without too much trouble
that, for the purpose of this particular article, those sources are
sufficient, then I think they should do that rather than delete it. The
historic argument against that is that Wikipedians are not experts on the
quality of sources in a particular topic area and cannot make that kind of a
call - but, really, I think this is getting less and less true all the time.
I disagree with your strong linking of "quality" and "better
sourcing". For
most users of Wikipedia, quality is going to mean accuracy, combined with
actually covering the topic at all. Using only information from reliable
sources is one way to achieve this, but I feel strongly that is not the
_only_ way, and if Wikipedia's rules are such that it is, then they should
be changed. It is stupid when we have to delete articles that nobody
believes to be inaccurate on the basis of rules set up to ensure accuracy.
None of the above should be construed to imply that I support badly written,
inaccurate articles that don't help users. I just think that there are
plenty of topics out there that can't be "officially" sourced, but which we
could nevertheless be covering, and well. Apply all the warnings you want to
such articles, but give the users their half-loaf.
---
Laurence "GreenReaper" Parry
http://greenreaper.co.uk/ -
http://wikifur.com/