[Wikipedia-l] Cite your sources?

[koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com]

Andre Wrote:
>Reacting on Stephen Gilbert's "possible bug report", I went through searching
>for other pages that also contain w: links. As such I got to
>[[Wikipedia:Cite your sources]]. And from the page talk it seems that everyone
>but 24 agreed with it at the time. Nowadays I see _noone_ citing sources on a
>regular basis (or even an irregular basis). Would it not be time to remove
>this 'Rule to consider', or else at least change the 'Talk' page such that
>it is clear that it is not a majority opinion nowadays?

Wikipedia and "cite your sources" have an uncomfortable history.  AFAIK, it's mostly a tool used against minority opinions, esp. left-wing ones.  I've used it myself on occasion, and had it used against me.  I can understand why no one cites sources for e.g. the value of pi or the fact that the earth revolves around the sun, but if we're going to update the policy, we should first think hard about whether we want to admit that we value sources most when something in the article challenges our own inherent assumptions.  It takes the work off us and puts it on the person making claims we disbelieve.  That's valuable, I guess, since in some regards it's a bar against original research, and wikipedia is not a place for original research.  But the result is also that it tends to favor mainstream views, and NPOV is still imperfectly applied at wikipedia.  Personally, I would like to see articles on e.g. green criticisms of capitalism, communist criticisms of socialism, etc., provided they are done from the NPOV.  Of course doing it would not be easy, and not necessarily be anything I wanted to take part in.

Personally, I'm quite certain that we've often used "cite your sources" as a means to silence minority opinions.  (But, really, 24 was left of me politically and I was in the chorus asking for sources so I'm just another hypocrite).  :-/

There may be other (more legitimate) reasons for valuing sources most in controversial articles, and if so, we should state them: everything "aboveboard," as it were.  Certainly the policy needs to be revamped.

kq