On 1/24/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
2) A casual editor who comes upon a mistake or a
redlink is going to
fix it from their personal knowledge, not references.
This was, in fact, the original intended process for writing articles, no?
With enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow? That's the whole concept behind
the wiki/open source thing that the project is based on. References were an
afterthought, as indicated by our horrible kludgy support for them.
The whole concept behind Be Bold is to add information that you know, and
not worry about referencing it; references will be added when needed.
References are obviously a great thing, and should be added whenever
possible, but should content really be removed just because it's not
referenced?
At the very least, we shouldn't expect newcomers to figure out citation
templates and Cite.php. Just figure out a way to encourage first-time
editors to include some type of reference, in whatever form they can manage.
I'm heartened to hear that someone remembers what it's all about. The
need for immediate references came about because of the Seigenthaler
incident, which quite rightly forced us to pay attention in potentially
libellous situations.
Naturally it bred a whole crop of overreactors who really don't
understand how an article grows.
Ec