With all this talk about referencing, I decided to take a look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Fact_and_Reference_Check
and I was surprised to see that unlike stubs and deletion debates articles
lacking references weren't sorted or even listed by topic. If articles that
need references are sorted or listed by topic, it means you will attract the
people most likely to know where to find references and willing to add them.
This project needs some extension that somehow sends of notices to the
relevant WikiProject when a certain article is tagged.
Secondly, I only found this project through the list of WikiProjects. I
couldn't remember its exact name and visiting some help pages on referencing
left me empty handed. This project should be linked all over the reference
help pages and possibly get some redirects from likely titles.
Thirdly, people are more likely to do something if they feel they get
rewarded for it. Look at the people who go through the heavy FA procedure.
Most of them do it simply to see an article they like or worked on on the
Main Page. And each time I get a barnstar, I still get a warm fuzzy feeling
of appreciation inside. *Rewards can get a lot of work done.*
I couldn't find a referencing barnstar. One should be created to encourage
people to go ahead and do it and if such a barnstar exists, it should be
made more prominent.
And finally, I'm thinking ahead. If somehow we can get every article sourced
we need to look at our next problem. It won't be lack of sources but
accuracy of sources that will be our next problem. Vandals will alter
sources or people will make apparently sourced claims where the link or book
reference doesn't actually back up the claim. We should start thinking on
how to handle that so we don't run into problems if we ever manage to get
there.
Mgm