On 28/04/2009, Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 12:43 PM, Ian Woollard ian.woollard@gmail.com wrote:
On 28/04/2009, doc doc.wikipedia@ntlworld.com wrote:
But, as long as a consensus, with good reason, wish to retain, any burden is discharged.
No.
I'm pretty sure that the principle is that any material that isn't referenced to a reliable source can be removed at any time, irrespective of consensus.
-- -Ian Woollard
But I was a little surprised to see a lone outpost of sanity in WP:V:
"Any material lacking a reliable source may be removed, but editors might object if you remove material without giving them sufficient time to provide references, and it has always been good practice, and expected behavior of Wikipedia editors (in line with our editing policy), to make reasonable efforts to find sources oneself that support such material, and cite them."
Yes, and after I've spent 1.5 seconds with google failing to find it, then the material is gone.
This thing about:
But, as long as a consensus, with good reason, wish to retain, any burden is discharged.
Is simply a lot of crap; the material has to have a reference or two or it can go at any time. And that's the bottom line.
This may sound harsh, but it's the only thing that stops people adding OR.
And you might argue that certain things are 'common sense' but I've spent significant fractions of my time on wikipedia talk pages laboriously listing multiple sources *in addition* to the reliable sources in the article to prevent people from replacing referenced facts with "common sense"... that was actually completely incorrect and unreferenced. I've had people explain to me that they have first-hand experience of things... and still get it completely and utterly wrong.
Bottom line: this is not negotiable.
-- gwern