On 12/1/06, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote:
The verifiability policy has never been a hardline
policy, but a
guideline and something to aim towards. When it was first adopted,
nobody thought it meant that we should summarily delete the 80%+ of the
encyclopedia that at the time was unsourced. Instead what it meant was
that we should begin going through and adding sources to it.
In general some amount of common sense is required. Claims that are
almost certainly true but uncited should be left in and have a citation
supplied---this is what the {{fact}} tag is for. Claims that are
surprising or unlikely should be removed or moved to the talk page,
pending some verification that they actually are true. Claims that are
negative claims about a living individual should be treated in the
second manner by default. We wouldn't have a living-persons policy, a
{{fact}} template, or any number of other such things if our
verifiability policy were that all unsourced statements should be
summarily deleted.
What is the advantage of having a policy that says "You must do X",
then interpreting it as "Actually you only have to do X in some
situations"? Wouldn't it be more helpful for everyone, especially
including newcomes, to have a policy that says "Do X in the following
situations"?
A policy that no one really follows is bad news.
Steve