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

[bobolozo]

--- Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 12:32 PM, bobolozo
> <bobolozo at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >  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?
> 
> Absolutely not, under any circumstances.  Never
> remove a reference
> unless you either (a) remove the information
> referenced (placing it on
> the talk page unless it is libellous), or (b) add
> another reference to
> a better source that completely covers everything
> the previous
> reference did.
> 
> David is correct that removing references like this
> will lead to swift sanction.
> 
> -Matt

As far as I can tell, this statement that one should
never remove a source without replacing it or removing
the text it supports, this is not contained in any of
our policies or guidelines.

It would make sense if everything in Wikipedia were
sourced and if no unsourced content were allowed. 
However, since probably 90+% of the text in Wikipedia
has no sources, I don't see why your statement makes
sense.  Unsourced content is allowed, and can sit
there for years in an article, but as soon as a
reference is ever added, even if the reference is
totally inappropriate, the unsourced content now must
be removed?

An extreme example of this, but... suppose some
spammer goes through and adds references to 1000
articles in random unsourced paragraphs, with the
source given being
mortgage-refinance-online-low-prices.biz, totally off
topic from any of the articles.  We're now not allowed
to remove this spam without gutting all of these
articles or spending hundreds of hours digging up sources?


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