On Jan 24, 2007, at 8:39 PM, Phil Sandifer wrote:
Consider this another entry in that time-tested genre of "obviously futile suggestions to nuke things that nobody is ever going to nuke, but probably should anyway" posts. (The classic, of course, being Nuke AfD. Which we should still do.)
We should nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]. They are not working. They have never worked. It is not a feasible project to go and add sources to everything, and new contributors who are editing casually are never going to be willing to do the extra work of having sources. The result is a rule where we are always going to be playing catch-up.
Nor do the pages prevent incidents like Siegenthaler, which was a problem with exactly one cause, which is that nobody had ever actually looked at that page after it was created. No policy in the world will fix a page that nobody is editing.
Yes, we need to ensure that people do not add crap information. This can be covered easily with "Information that people doubt the validity of should be sourced." And we can then leave the community to deal with issues on a case by case basis with the direction that they should be careful to make sure that information is accurate. And we should shoot people who continue to add dubious information over the objections of other editors. Which is basically how we wrote an encyclopedia that has proven pretty trustworthy, and, more to the point, is how we actually operate now on the vast majority of our articles, since [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]] are not actually useful pages.
But to have a pair of policies that cannot be honestly implemented serves only one purpose: causing debates among editors that waste time and good faith.
Nuke them.
-Phil
Sorry to quote the whole thing, but there weren't really any sections I felt I could snip.
I'm not sure I understand what your reasoning behind this is. You say that [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]] are "not actually useful pages" and "cannot be honestly implemented." To your first statement, I think they're incredibly useful and I didn't see a shred of letters exhibiting why they are not in your e-mail. As to your second statement, that's true of nearly all (if not all) of our policies. Those are *goals*. Of course it's not feasible that every single sentence in every single article across every localized Wikipedia be sourced from reliable sources. That's ridiculous. But in order for an article to be a good one, it must be sourced from reliable sources, and that's what those policies state.
Encyclopedias are tertiary sources; if they're good, they provide an adequate summation, but hardly the whole picture. Encyclopedias, when used correctly, are merely a "jump-off point" for new reading and learning. If we alter our goals so that we do not strive for providing sources and references, then not only will we have failed in providing a credible encyclopedic article, we will have failed in providing an article that serves any sort of purpose for our readers.
I have no idea where the idea that all WP:CITE and WP:RS do is cause debates among editors, because I personally have seen nothing of the sort. I'd really appreciate some background perhaps to better understand where you're coming from.
Just my $0.02, [[User:bbatsell]]