We're a wiki. The point is collaborative editing. we're supposed to be
helping each other write articles, not arguing over responsibility.
Everyone coming to edit at WP assumes the obligation to make helpful
edits, not detrimental ones, but not necessarily compete edits--not
necessarily perfect edits. It is altogether reasonable to come with
the intention of starting an article and expecting help to finish it.
Those who complain that articles are unsourced should help the others
to source them, not blame hem for writing unsourced articles. The only
appropriate thing to do with an unsourced article is to source it, of
call it to the attention of those who can.
If the lack of sources is such as to fail to establish that the
article is suitable for WP, only then it is appropriate to challenge.
DGG
On 7/12/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
Stephen Bain wrote:
The important part about citation is just
identifying which parts of
the text use which sources, because that's something that can only be
done by the person who has written the text (or done all the same
research). The formatting can be fixed by others later.
It may be easier for the original author in many cases, but it's
certainly not impossible for other authors to come along later on and
dig up references without re-doing all the same research. It can even be
easier since one already knows what to look for. Grab a few words from
the unsourced text, put them in Google, and in many cases you're 90% of
the way there.
There's also the article-writing style where one happens to be a
personal expert in the field who knows the stuff backwards and forwards
from personal education, and so is able to slap together a solid
beginning of an article or section without having to do a bunch of
reading. While the result is far from a "finished" article it can often
be a very good _start_ to an article.
All in all I think putting some sort of deadline on deleting material
tagged with {{fact}} is a very bad idea. If for no other reason than I
would never tag anything with {{fact}} again.
I've always been a believer in resisting simple people with simplistic
solutions. They are often living exemplars of the maxim. "With friends
like these, who needs enemies?" The kind of officious behaviour
proposed keeps a lot of good editors away from anything constructive,
because they need to be constantly monitoring and babysitting the
literalists.
The problems addressed will not normally be fixed by adding references
and sources, and going away self-satisfied that all is now well with the
world. An article (even one that started with adequate references) may
have drifted with successive rewrites and stylistic improvements to
something quite different from what was originally said. References
that were previously there can end up quite innocently attached to a
completely different statement.
An article may have a paragraph about a particular military campaign
during the month of October. It starts from a fairly mainstream and
easily found historical text and that is properly noted in the
references. Later someone adds the specific dates in October when
certain elements of the campaign happened, but does not give sources for
this additional information, but erroneously and unintentionally leaves
the impression that these dates were in the general reference. Nobody
is seriously suggesting that the dates are actually wrong.
While there are strong reasons to support the principle that the
originator of information is ultimately responsible for the information
that he adds, this is not an excuse for others to deny responsibility.
Before we can resort to the originator's responsibility as a fail-safe
device a lot of efforts by other people should take place before that.
Ec
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