On 12/11/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
In my opinion it is never acceptable to keep false information in the article namespace. There are places where eventualism is acceptable, but presenting false information as true information is not one of them.
Known to be false information, yes. Unverified information is another beast---a large proportion of our mathematical articles are currently unreferenced, but almost certainly correct (and can be easily verified by anyone knowledgeable in the field, or with access to an intro-level textbook).
If it's an unverified half-sentence stub, perhaps we don't lose much by simply deleting it. If it's a good article that just needs some references added, though, we move backwards by deleting it and forcing someone later to start from scratch.
-Mark
Well, I think I've made it abundantly clear I disagree. Those mathematical articles should all be referenced. The person who is in the best position to do that is the original author. Sure, we can grandfather these old ones in, but going forward I don't see why we can't just put in this information from the beginning. (And no, if you make it optional, people aren't going to do it.)
Articles can always be undeleted. "Forcing someone" to drop a note on an admin page that you'd like a particular article undeleted so you can add references to it is just not that significant (especially compared to sitting on AFD for 5 days). And like I said before, I'd prefer that anyone can see this deleted text without bugging an admin anyway.
Anthony