On 2/28/06, Stan Shebs <shebs(a)apple.com> wrote:
I think where people get (sometimes justifiably)
paranoid is that
the writing does have to be careful not to introduce new statements
inadvertantly. For instance, "B, A, and therefore C" is not just
a rhetorical improvement on "B, A, and C". It's an interesting
exercise, for instance, to update the carefully-chosen words of an
old 1911EB entry without changing the original author's meaning.
I agree with you, Stan, except for your use of the word "paranoia,"
because edits like "A, B, and therefore C," where the sources in fact
only say "A, B, C" are commonplace, and that's precisely what NOR and
V are there to guard against. Any editor can request a source for the
"therefore," and if it's not forthcoming, "therefore" is removed.
It
isn't removed only where it's "controversial," as The Cunctator was
trying to add to V, and which is anyway a subjective judgment. It can
be removed, whether controversial or not, if no reliable source can be
found to support it.
What The Cunctator may be worried about is that people will use this
as an excuse to remove statements like "The sun rose on Monday. The
sun rose today. Therefore, the sun will rise tomorrow," where being
asked to track down a source would be WP:POINT. This is where
commonsense kicks in. Anyone removing obvious and undisputed facts is
engaged in a form of vandalism and we all know it when we see it. But
just because we can't produce a complete list of undisputed facts that
don't need a source doesn't mean we have to worry about making our
policies are tight as possible. Every policy contains the invisible
sentence "Use your commonsense."
In any event, I've yet to see an example of an undisputed fact for
which no reliable source could be found, or an example of an editor
going around removing undisputed facts because they lack sources.
Exactly. The "slippery slope" argument fails in this case because what
people fear *might* happen if these policies are actually enforced, in
practice never actually *does* happen.
Jay.