David Gerard wrote:
I dont follow. Could you give us a real example? For instance how would I refer on the talk page to the claim that Ann Coulter once gave a venereal disease to Clinton (on Festivus), without actually referring to it? You can hypothetical examples if you like.
Refer to the removed diff, as suggested? For claims that are new, provide the reference right there.
A large part of the strength of Wikipedia is the ability to split work based on people's strengths, which requires the ability to openly communicate with other editors.
For example, questions along the following lines posted on talk pages are a relatively commonplace part of the normal functioning of Wikipedia: "I remember some sort of scandal involving [politician] in the mid-1990s that this article doesn't mention at all. As I recall, he was accused of hiring a prostitute with government funds. Does anybody know of a good source covering that story, or am I misremembering?"
The question can then be followed up with someone who has access to Lexis-Nexis or some other good way of researching the matter. The people who have good research resources and the people who notice omissions aren't always the same person, so communication between them makes things work much more nicely.
Of course, that isn't biography-specific: I've made comments on science-related articles where the article omitted something I had learned in a class, but for which I couldn't find a good reference (my class notes not being citeable), and I've followed up on such comments from other people. Coming up with a new rule that no negative information about a person can be even *discussed* without a solid reference being provided up front would systemically skew articles and hamper work on biographies, though.
-Mark