This was, in fact, the original intended process for writing articles, no? With enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow? That's the whole concept behind the wiki/open source thing that the project is based on. References were an afterthought, as indicated by our horrible kludgy support for them.
Absolutely - that *was* the whole idea. Unfortunately, that idea didn't lead to an encyclopedia people trusted, so now, in order to be credible, we have to reference everything. It's unfortunate, but unavoidable, I think.