Stephen Bain wrote:
The important part about citation is just identifying which parts of the text use which sources, because that's something that can only be done by the person who has written the text (or done all the same research). The formatting can be fixed by others later.
It may be easier for the original author in many cases, but it's certainly not impossible for other authors to come along later on and dig up references without re-doing all the same research. It can even be easier since one already knows what to look for. Grab a few words from the unsourced text, put them in Google, and in many cases you're 90% of the way there.
There's also the article-writing style where one happens to be a personal expert in the field who knows the stuff backwards and forwards from personal education, and so is able to slap together a solid beginning of an article or section without having to do a bunch of reading. While the result is far from a "finished" article it can often be a very good _start_ to an article.
All in all I think putting some sort of deadline on deleting material tagged with {{fact}} is a very bad idea. If for no other reason than I would never tag anything with {{fact}} again.