On Jan 24, 2007, at 9:54 PM, bbatsell wrote:
Sorry to quote the whole thing, but there weren't really any sections I felt I could snip.
I'm not sure I understand what your reasoning behind this is. You say that [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]] are "not actually useful pages" and "cannot be honestly implemented." To your first statement, I think they're incredibly useful and I didn't see a shred of letters exhibiting why they are not in your e-mail. As to your second statement, that's true of nearly all (if not all) of our policies. Those are *goals*. Of course it's not feasible that every single sentence in every single article across every localized Wikipedia be sourced from reliable sources. That's ridiculous. But in order for an article to be a good one, it must be sourced from reliable sources, and that's what those policies state.
Our policies should not be goals - they should be policies. If we cannot meaningfully implement the policy across all of our pages then it's a bad policy. This isn't actually a problem for most of our policies. [[WP:NPOV]] is actually basically understandable by any reasonably intelligent person, can be kept in mind, doesn't really require extra work. As a result, most of our pages do make a passing effort on NPOV. That is not true for sourcing.
Encyclopedias are tertiary sources; if they're good, they provide an adequate summation, but hardly the whole picture. Encyclopedias, when used correctly, are merely a "jump-off point" for new reading and learning. If we alter our goals so that we do not strive for providing sources and references, then not only will we have failed in providing a credible encyclopedic article, we will have failed in providing an article that serves any sort of purpose for our readers.
There's a difference between having sourcing policies and making it a goal that we have sources and references. A good encyclopedia article should point towards further reading, yes. That's not what [[WP:CITE]] or [[WP:RS]] say, though. This should be something akin to adding images to an article - something we like to do, but not something that we freak out over.
I have no idea where the idea that all WP:CITE and WP:RS do is cause debates among editors, because I personally have seen nothing of the sort. I'd really appreciate some background perhaps to better understand where you're coming from.
Pop onto AfD for a bit. Or to articles on popular culture. Or [[WP:FAC]]. Sourcing disputes are a more or less constant din - both with articles that are accurate being taken to task for not being well-sourced enough (This has become a pernicous flavor of deletionism in the past year or so) and with articles that are complete shit getting a pass because they have sources, even if the sources are bollocks.
-Phil