On May 1, 2008, at 11:11 PM, Risker wrote:
Funny...for completely different reasons, I ran across a block that probably resulted from exactly this "game" - relatively inexperienced user trying to remove "sourced content", warned by 3 different users, blocked by another. The only catch was - the now-blocked editor, as sloppy as his edits were, was actually correct. The information he was removing was being attributed to references that said no such thing. After a few similarly unpleasant encounters, the rarely posting editor flamed out and was indef blocked. Subsequent evidence suggests he was probably the subject of the BLP for which he was blocked.
Speed isn't quite everything.
Yet another reason why our fetishistic obsession with sources needs to be toned down. By treating them as the be-all and end-all of content we make it far too easy to get utter lies through by citing them to a source. The worst are book sources - I know Danny, at one point, created a hoax article cited to a non-existent book with the ISBN of a Dr. Seuss book. This, of course, attracted no notice while we zealously remove entire accurate articles on important subjects for a lack of sources.
Wish I could remember what the article he created was so I could go delete it. He did it under a sock. It was on an African politician. I probably should have deleted it at the time, but I didn't feel like starting a fight with Danny.
/sigh
In any case, the point is, our sourcing policies have a tangental relationship at best to quality.
-Phil