On 10/3/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/3/05, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote: I have the phone number of my local library.
So supose I claim that "heterocycles can have many nitrogens but only one sulfur or oxygen in any ring" and cite page 1176 Organic chemistry Clayden, Greeves, Warren and Wothers ISBN 0-19-850346-6. Now the book exists but your local libary may not have a copy so it takes time for you to get it. That is quite a lot of effort (fortunetly in this case the book is a fairly standard text book so there should be at least one other person who has a copy). This gets really fun when someone decides to reference something that can only be aquired from the public records office.
There's a difference between making sources necessary and making them sufficient. Just because something has a listed source doesn't mean it can't be removed. In the case of obscure sources we have to use our best judgement, including considering the user who has cited the source and the reasonableness of the statement being claimed. But something without a listed source, for which no source can be found, should definitely be removed from the article.
Anthony
P.S., I'm sorry for so many replies to this thread, but I consider citing sources to be one of the most important things for an encyclopedia article.