Rich Holton wrote:
Jeff Raymond wrote:
Erik Moeller wrote:
It is increasingly common that subjects of articles wish to interact directly with us and tell us that their article is wrong in some way. It is, in my opinion, silly for us to reject even harmless corrections on the grounds that they cannot be traced to a reliable source. If Wikipedia itself becomes a primary source in the process of someone commenting on "their" article, what is the problem with that from a purely factual point of view? Depending on the nature of the statement, such comments could be either incorporated as corrections (date of birth) or attributed statements (".. denies that he ever had sexual relations with that woman").
Because WP:V requires that challenged statements have sources. You can't replace one unsourced statement with anohter like that, nor would it be acceptable to replace a sourced statement with an unsourced one.
Can't we discuss these sort of ideas without resorting to quoting policy? Ok, yes, we can state what the current policy *is*, but sometimes it's worth considering what the policy *should be*, or what the actual practice should be. Or, why the current policy is the correct policy. But, in this kind of a conversation, just simply quoting policy is not particularly useful (IMHO).
An excellent suggestion!
Ec