Bryan Derksen wrote:
But even you, even now in this very instance you're using as an example of what you think should be done, _didn't_ ruthlessly remove the unsourced information. If you really believe that we have to be absolutely ruthless about removing all unsourced information why did you deliberately leave the married-with-two-young-sons thing in?
I asked her personally and she said it was true, and at that moment I assumed we can find a source quickly enough and and I know that bringing the section in question to the attention of good editors will bring about quick positive change.
I am not advocating some kind of weird radical knee jerk attempt to take out every single thing in Wikipedia TODAY that does not have a source.
I am advocating that we give stronger support to people who are fighting the good fight on quality issues.
I think the reason is that our one truly fundamental goal is to write a good, free encyclopedia, and that while attempting to source everything is a good means to that goal if we were to take it to the extreme it would actually start to move us farther away from it. If we were to actually follow through with the absolute full extent of the only-sourced-statements ideal it would devastate Wikipedia's current contents and IMO raise such a barrier to editing that new work would slow to a crawl. We have to consider these costs and find a compromise position that tries to minimize them.
Well, yes, of course I agree with that.
--Jimbo