[WikiEN-l] Unreliable sources, or no sources at all?

bobolozo bobolozo at yahoo.com
Sat Mar 22 19:32:05 UTC 2008


Much of the text of Wikipedia is unsourced currently. 
In addition, due perhaps to lack of understanding of
our policies, or just the desire to add sources, we
have tens of thousands(at least) of unreliable sources
listed as references.  By doing a Special
pages/External links search, it's not hard to find
large numbers of these.  A search on *.tripod.com, for
example, gives 10,000+ links, many of which are being
used as references. africanelections.tripod.com alone
is linked to 
484 articles, and is being presented as a source in
multiple templates.

My question is, is it a good idea to simply go through
and remove large numbers of these?  Are we better off
with no sources at all for portions of text, rather
than have references which consist of message board
postings and personal websites and such?

I noticed people using urbandictionary entries as
references, and went through and removed all I could
find, from about 100 articles (I left any links in
External links sections, as having a link there is
entirely different from having it listed as a
reference).  But now, having discovered the ease with
which I can find thousands more unreliable sources as
references, I'm wondering what others think of the
mass removal of unreliable sources.

Am I correct in believing that we're better off having
an unsourced paragraph of text, rather than a
paragraph which has as a reference
somedudeswebpage.tripod.com?

(And, yes, I know, it would be optimal to replace
unreliable sources with reliable ones.  But this would
take about 100 times as long)


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