[WikiEN-l] Removing unsourced information

[Gwern Branwen]

On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 5:47 PM, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Gwern Branwen wrote:
>> On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 3:42 PM, Charles Matthews
>> <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>>
>>> quiddity wrote:
>>>
>>>> What to do about someone who has "lost the plot"?
>>>> For example, this editor seems to be going from article to article,
>>>> deleting every prose paragraph that doesn't have a ref tag (usually
>>>> everything except the intro sentence).
>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&offset=20100125214401&target=JBsupreme
>>>> Some of the content being removed is obviously not good (selfpromoting
>>>> peacockery etc), but much is perfectly fine, and this seems to be one
>>>> of the worst (most indiscriminate) ways to handle the hypothetical
>>>> problem.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Suggest that one can drive-by even faster in adding {{fact}}? I think
>>> this is the first step, the suggestion that identifying unsourced facts
>>> is a way of achieving a similar end, and that we can all applaud it when
>>> properly done.
>>>
>>> Charles
>>>
>>
>> And where does the {{fact}}-bombing end?
>>
>> [[Medici bank]] is as finely referenced an article as I have ever (or
>> likely will ever) written with 96 footnotes, multiple books & papers
>> consulted, and extensive quoting - yet the overwhelming majority of
>> sentences lack <ref> tags and are presumably candidates for bombing.
>>
>>
> Well, I think that in a well-written, well-sourced article people should
> be still allowed to ask for further references. I foolishly copied the
> basics of [[List of dissenting academies]] out of a book, thinking it
> was a cheap article; and so far have added about 120 footnotes and
> created around 50 articles at Wikisource to support it. Just shows where
> these things can lead.
>
> I actually had big problems with inline referencing style when it was a
> hot potato, and I did start putting articles together sentence by
> sentence. There were reassurances that it was not going to lead to
> "lame" writing, and I think those were overdone (more precisely, in an
> area where there is plenty of academic research at book length, you will
> probably by OK, but that's quite a limitation). OTOH inline referenced
> writing is now the house style, and actually there are worse things:
> concision is good, and fact-checked encyclopedia articles are good, and
> the fact that articles are never finished is a given.
>
> Charles

The problem is not that the article is not finished, the problem is
our guidelines allow wikilawyers to demand that the map be the
territory.

[[WP:ZEN]]:

     'Once, a novice was meditating over a guideline, when Gwern came
by. The novice was tossed an unreferenced line from a plot summary.
Gwern said, "If you do not reference this, it is unsourced and must be
removed. But if you do reference it with a quote from the story, it is
a copyvio and so must be removed. Now quickly! What do you do?"'

Our guidelines make a weak nod toward 'hey guys don't be a WP:DICK
mmkay?' but do not ever countermand the strong injunctions towards
sourcing. This is not helped by the extremist statements by people
like Jimbo that material without a <ref> is to be considered guilty
until proven innocent. An editor can go to an article and challenge
unremarked material of ancient provenance sentence by sentence*, and
there is no point at which a good editor can say to her, 'You have sat
too long for any good you have been doing lately... Depart, I say; and
let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!'

Our guidelines assume a binary - something is referenced or
unreferenced. An article is referenced or unreferenced. Magical
thinking ('if we just delete all unreferenced BLPs, we will have
improved article quality *obviously*!').

There is, of course, nothing that is completely 'referenced' - if I
state the Medici bank used bills of draft payable in florins on the
Bruges branch, and I cite de Rouver 1987, it can be object that I
haven't really referenced it; if I provide page number, they can fall
back on 'does the ref say Bruges? florins? Medici bank? bills of
drat?'; if I provide quotes, they can employ copyright paranoia; and
so on.

Nor is there anything completely unreferenced; if I assert Star Wars
canon has multiple levels, the references - though inaccessible to me
now and never to be included in the article - are the many books and
articles I've read about Star Wars. Referencing is a long continuum
with nothing at either end.

* It is worth noting that the administrator Lars, involved in deleting
BLPs, has claimed that WP:SILENCE has its exact opposite meaning in
BLP articles - material that has gone unremarked & unchallenged for
years is actually highly controversial, and not anodyne & acceptable.

-- 
gwern