On 31 Jan 2006, at 00:52, Bryan Derksen wrote:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
I think we can have quite a simply solution to
this. Do the same
as we did
to the images. Stuff which isn't cited within a week, can be
speedy deleted
like we do with images now. Just make sure it only applies to
articles
created after date X.
Articles without references are simply works in progress most of
the time, and I definitely don't support the deletion of works in
progress. Images are different since it's far harder to check them
for copyright issues and such.
Instead of deleting such articles, how about simply withholding
"stable" flags from all unreferenced versions (ie, all of them)?
Another idea would be to simply add an {{unreferenced}} or
{{unsourced}} tag, to alert readers.
Deleting articles because they have no references is draconian.
15 years ago or so I worked on a specialist encyclopaedia. It was
undersourced but was the
standard reference in the field. Like wikipedia, you could contact
the authors of the articles
if you wanted better references. I did encourage the addition of
sources a bit I seem to
remember (even though I was doing proofreading mostly). It is not
that important to have a
reference for every fact - eventually people will dispute the ones
that are unclear. Some
sources is really helpful, and I agree that there are far too few
references but this is a
transitional issue - not enough of the real sources are online and
books are not available
to all. There are some great online projects (like
http://www.british-
history.ac.uk/) but
most of the stuff I know about isnt online yet. Many things people
write are memories
from sources that they no longer have access to. There are also some
bits of original
research around that are not that problematic - one day they will be
published elsewhere,
I am not going to complain before that.
We also need to be prepared for the way the internet is changing
availability of primary
sources. It used to be that access to these was rare and available to
only a few people.
Encyclopaedias were written from secondary or tertiary sources. The
"fancruft" of WP is
perhaps a primer for what happens when primary sources are available
without an academic
commentary (webcomics or whatever). Fields that have been less
restricted in access have
always been more dominated by "non professionals" for example [[Ian
Nairn]] as an
important architectural critic.
Amateurism (in the old sense) and expertise are very important.
"Academicism" where people
need to have PhDs and use the Chicago Manual of Style and cite a
reference for every sentence
are not where we need to be going. They represent a kind of geeky
view of knowledge as a
pure collection of facts where synthesis is ignored; do we have to
reference the order in
which we present these referenced facts?
Justinc