[Foundation-l] Verifiability: Constitution?

Christoph Seydl Christoph.Seydl at students.jku.at
Mon Sep 18 11:15:06 UTC 2006


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Andre Engels wrote:
> Can you provide such a reference too for all the other parts of the
> definition of 'bucket'? And if not, should we delete that? And if you
> can, should we delete it nevertheless until you have done so?

Historian did quite a lot of research on buckets back to ancient times.
There are probably industrial norms on buckets. If the policy says it
should be deleted, it should. If the policy says it must not deleted,
don't delete it.

> The motivation will certainly increase, yes. Nobody wants to add
> material to Wikipedia that will be removed again. But it also means
> that we are going to delete more if the rule is added than in the
> whole of Wikipedia until now. Use [[Special:Randompage]]. The chance
> that it's sourced is small. The change that if it is sourced, it is
> specified what comes from which source is even smaller. You might as
> well go and delete pages at random.

True. This fact supports my assumption that the pillar verifiability.
And if it is a pillar, a strong enforcement of verifiability is
obviously not wanted by most editors.

> How do you define critical material?

It's a question of stipulation. Example: If the collective opinion is
that hard facts (e.g. numbers, percentages) may not be sourced, unless
they are disputed, as a rule, it's not critical.

> Why? Can't this rule be left to the separate projects?

Yes, but then it is not pillar anymore, if verifiability can mean
anything between restrictive and laissez-faire. Then an official
statement at meta that verifiability is optional to any project would be
appropriate.

/Chris
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