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