[WikiEN-l] Removing unsourced information

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Sun, Jan 24, 2010 at 7:29 PM, Apoc 2400 <apoc2400 at gmail.com> wrote:
> It is commonly said that anyone can remove unsourced information, and that
> the burden lies on the editor who wants to include information to provide a
> source. I have always taken this to mean that if I think something is wrong
> or otherwise does not belong in the article, then I can remove it at will if
> there is no source.

Why would you need something which is incorrect to be unsourced in
order to remove it?  The body of the policy provides that you can
remove or correct clearly incorrect material in a dozen different
ways, it doesn't really matter what the adjacent mark-up is. Moreover,
often when material is correct you can remove it for due to editorial
judgement or other reasons, sourced or not.

> I did not take it to mean that I could go from article
> to article and remove any sentence without a source, for no other reason
> than being unsourced.

It would mean that, except that kind of behaviour is barred by a
plethora of policies, guidelines, and cultural norms against
disruptive or otherwise harmful activities.

In other words, the rule makes it clearly that you can remove material
simply for being unsourced anywhere where the greater guidance doesn't
prohibit you— e.g. in cases where doing so isn't harmful to the
mission of the project.

I've always seen the purpose of making this rule explicit was to
influence the tie-breaking: That we shouldn't assume all removals of
unsourced material to be harmful on their face simply because they are
removals, and that we prefer sourced material enough that we don't
want to put any burden on people removing unsourced statements to
prove their disagreement or disbelief.

In an idealized Wikipedia edited only by sane and well meaning people
this would probably work fine: No one would remove something unsourced
unless they found it disagreeable, even if we never asked them what
they found disagreeable about it.  In reality this falls down because
some people will abuse that system for a multitude of reasons,
including the fact that some people are mentally defective and believe
that everything not forbidden must be done, so we have a multitude of
operating principles to cope with the resulting disruptions.