On 14/08/06, stevertigo vertigosteve@yahoo.com wrote:
Im not sure on the stats, but it is my impression that this demand for verifiability is 1) deletionistic 2) one sided, and not applied to one's own person and 3) comes with some attached notion of "reliable sources" by which material from any deemed "unreliable" sources can be deleted. Thats the topic. Discuss.
e.g. the War on Blogs, wherein some editors have got it into their heads that ALL BLOGS ARE EVIL AND MUST NEVER BE USED IN REFERENCES rather than e.g. regarding them as, say, lesser sources than peer-reviewed academic papers and assuming the reader can read. The response to crap sources is to say "those are crap sources, cut it out" rather than countering foolishness with foolishness.
On non-contentious topics, the right way to do it would be to shift it to the talk page for discussion and an attempt at sourcing, e.g. the stuff on the early [[Casio Exilim]]s being crap in low light is observed by a pile of Exilim owners (e.g. me) but I can't find a good source - so out it goes as original research, but it's on the talk page should I or someone find something verifiable showing this to be an issue.
On contentious topics, there is good reason to be hard-arsed about sources. But that doesn't mean you go overboard and legalistic because someone who hates blogs edit-warred that wording into WP:V.
- d.