On 25/03/2008, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Mar 23, 2008 at 2:23 PM, bobolozo bobolozo@yahoo.com wrote:
As far as I can tell, this statement that one should never remove a source without replacing it or removing the text it supports, this is not contained in any of our policies or guidelines.
Perhaps it isn't, perhaps it is. It is, however, the /spirit/ of what we should be doing on Wikipedia. Policy and guideline pages are constantly modified by people with vested interests in having them say things that support their positions; I would not trust them. Removing sources is contrary to the spirit of the encyclopedia and the point of our sourcing policies. Obviously you can contrive a situation when one would do it; however, no Wikipedia policy is set in stone, deliberately.
One point that bobolozo is missing, in his enthusiasm to get mass-deleting, is that [[Wikipedia:Reliable sources]] is itself ... not a reliable source. It's a guideline, and one with truck-sized holes in it. Applying it robotically is a recipe for bureaucratic stupidity. Thinking it can be applied bureaucratically suggests a lack of the level of judgement one should have before performing such a drastic mass action. Precis: if you think WP:RS justifies such a course of action ... you shouldn't even be considering the action in question, and need to go back and think more first.
- d.