[WikiEN-l] Zero information is preferred to misleading or false information

[Rob]

On 5/18/06, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> WP:V is deliberately vague on this point and editors have to use
> common sense. If an article says "John Smith is a killer" and there's
> no source, remove it immediately. But an edit saying "Skiiing is
> Switzerland's top sport" can be tagged (but please remember to go back
> at some point to see if a source has turned up), or better still, the
> editor who's questioning it could look for a source himself. There are
> so many gradations of unsourced material between these two examples
> that we couldn't possibly be algorithmic about it, so editors have to
> be sensible: the more harmful or the sillier an unsourced edit looks,
> the faster it should be removed.

The problem is POV warriors aren't interested in gradations.  Anything
they don't like is challenged and deleted immediately.  Perhaps, with
the exception of the most obvious cases, we should change the policy
to require that any facts challenged on the grounds of simply being
unsourced should be immediately moved to the talk page by the person
deleting them.