Nick Wilkins wrote:
On 3/29/07, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
I hope the horse I am beating is still alive: we have to be absolutely ruthless about removing "I think I heard it somewhere" pseudo-information from Wikipedia, and especially from biographies.
About the only way to keep up with the drivel is to insta-revert unsourced stuff. It just takes too long to find a source for somebody else's edit, or ask about each one on a talk page; while you're doing all that, ten other pages are picking up garbage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ellen_Fanning&diff=next&ol...
The statement that she is related to Bernard Fanning was added at the same time as two external links. In this case, insta-reverting unsourced stuff wouldn't have done any good.
Heh. In practice though, that's an exceptional case.
Even asking for volunteers to vet a bio ahead of interview isn't going to catch everything. (Isn't it interesting how nobody ever complains about inaccuracies in articles other than the ones about themselves? Egos, geez...) Nope, avoiding interviews is the way to go here. :-)
Stan