On 6/24/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
As I've argued before when this sort of suggestion has come up, we can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Articles lacking sources aren't unacceptable, IMO, they're simply _unfinished_. They'd need to be properly verified before they were accepted for any sort of polished compilation, sure, but Wikipedia as a whole is not that compilation. It is the raw materials for one.
This is where the divide seems to hit. Those who work in the Foundation Office, and receive complaints from the outside world, tend to have a harsher view of things, arguing that all unsourced statements about living people, for instance, should be immediately removed. Those who do a lot of editing without hearing from the outside world tend to find this position untenable and impractical. Worse, they (we?) tend to just ignore it, since the number of people advocating it is tiny, and they haven't really made much significant noise about it yet.
I'm yet to see any meaningful common ground found between these positions, but I'm optimistic we can find a solution.
Steve