On 3/29/07, Stan Shebs stanshebs@earthlink.net wrote:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
I hope the horse I am beating is still alive: we have to be absolutely ruthless about removing "I think I heard it somewhere" pseudo-information from Wikipedia, and especially from biographies.
About the only way to keep up with the drivel is to insta-revert unsourced stuff. It just takes too long to find a source for somebody else's edit, or ask about each one on a talk page; while you're doing all that, ten other pages are picking up garbage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ellen_Fanning&diff=next&ol...
The statement that she is related to Bernard Fanning was added at the same time as two external links. In this case, insta-reverting unsourced stuff wouldn't have done any good. You would have actually had to have checked the sources (neither of which mention Bernard Fanning, incidentally). One of them, however, does provide a source for her being married with one son.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=88383
In fact, that source is '''still''' in the article, as of Jimbo's e-mail and edit to the article (though the link wasn't quite working, due to an extraneous /).
-- Jonel