On 11/30/06, Daniel P. B. Smith wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
From: "Steve Bennett" stevagewp@gmail.com
I don't think deleting accurate, high-quality, unreferenced material is in Wikipedia's best interests. Asking for a source, yes. Adding sources, yes. But *deleting* good material? No.
Unsourced material is not high-quality material.
I'll interpret that as "Uncited material can by definition never be considered 'high-quality material'."
And then I'll strongly disagree. Newspapers, encyclopaedias and many other sources of high-quality information regularly do not cite their sources. If we take one of our best featured articles and remove the references section, it is still much better than a shorter article that does cite its sources. And streets ahead of an article which false cites its sources...
Don't get me wrong, citing sources is good - but for us, its primary use is a defence against nonsense and worse. The sources are a means to quality, not a form of quality themselves.
Steve