Thomas Dalton wrote:
This was, in fact, the original intended process for writing articles, no? With enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow? That's the whole concept behind the wiki/open source thing that the project is based on. References were an afterthought, as indicated by our horrible kludgy support for them.
Absolutely - that *was* the whole idea. Unfortunately, that idea didn't lead to an encyclopedia people trusted, so now, in order to be credible, we have to reference everything. It's unfortunate, but unavoidable, I think.
I still believe in that original idea, and as far asd I'm concerned it still is the whole idea. I feel secure enough that I don't obsess over whether we are trusted. I do not participate in that monomania where absolutely everything needs to be referenced. I don't feel besieged by vandals and spammers, though they do need to be confronted. I don't feel overwhelmed by a multitude of articles about garage bands and other trivia. Wikipedia is not paper, and with a little less attention from their detractors the stubby articles about them will eventually be as difficult to find as the bands themselves. They don't use up a lot of server memory. The need that you see is perfectly avoidable.
Ec