On 12/25/05, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
The proposed decision says that if you are just using a request for sources as a tactic in POV edit warring it will not necessarily be taken at face value.
The difficulty is that we can never be sure that a request for sources is being used as a tactic. And even if it is, either there's a good source or there isn't, and if there isn't, the material shouldn't be in the article.
I've had editors ask me for sources for things that were obviously true (to me) and it was pretty clear they did it just to be irritating, but going off to find the sources was nevertheless instructive, and on one occasion I couldn't find a source that said exactly what I had added. So the wrong intention can lead to the right result.
But in the case being discussed, I see no evidence of bad intentions. When you're up against an editor like Xed, requesting sources for every edit is about the only way to deal with him, and it's what the policy recommends.
Sarah