Steve writes:
This may sound like a little thing, but I think it is vitally needed. When I was in conflict with CheeseDreams about the Cultural and Historical background of Jesus, one of my major problems was that she seemed not to have done any research whatsoever.
I too have come across this. It is frustrating to read over a dozen technical papers on science, philosophy or global warming, many published in peer-reviewed journals...yet find that my edits being reverted by someone who knows little about the topic.
Sadly, anarchy-loving Wikipedians value nice words and avoidance of three reverts in a day, but it places little value on sourced facts. We are doomed to fail in our effort to build a reliable, referenced and accurate encyclopedia unless the people contributing to articles can source their contributions.
Some claims, obviously, need no sourcing. "Most Christians do not worship Satan, and most Christians do not believe that the Sun orbits the Earth." When making statements of obvious and well-known fact, one does not need a source. But when someone claims "Most Christians today believe that Jesus has already arrived on Earth..." one must provide proper sources!
Yet as long as one behaves "nicely" people continue to shove nonsense into articles, even when they are unable and unwilling to back up their own claim, and even when their own position is refuted by articles published by well-known scholars.
The position of ten physicists with peer-reviewed publications falls away when confronted with one person who says "Nope, these papers don't claim what you say they claim. Physicists don't really believe that gravity exists on the moon." Well, the papers do make clear that physicists hold this view, but how do we counter someone who just replies "No, they don't"...and offers no sources.
In such a situation the person who offers quotes from published, and ofter peer-reviewed sources, should be allowed to make the edit, and the person who offers no sources should not be able to delete it. Is this not sensible?
Yet this is not happening, and we have no enforcement procedures in place. Larry Sanger's recent comments are thus well deserved.
But what if there is a user who strictly adheres to all behavior policies, but who nevertheless thinks of an article as if it were his/her own blog?...
The thing is, CD never answered my simple question, what was her source -- and I could not compel her to answer, and there was no sanction for her not answering.
Here is one place where I see the value of a committee that is empowered to ask "what are your sources" or "what kind of research did you do" and, if the answer is silence or something that just doesn't hold up, can impose a sanction.
Sounds reasonable.
Robert
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