I can see where you're coming from. Though I imagine that generally, truly uncontroversial information just goes right through without causing, well, any controversy. The minute someone says "Who says it's so?" the information has just become controversial, and "I do" doesn't seem like a tremendously good answer at that point. And for most genuinely uncontroversial/common-knowledge information, finding a source is trivial, and will take 2 minutes, while arguing over it takes as long as people want to argue. If people want confirmation that the sun is hot, or that the chemical formula for water is H2O, or that all atoms contain protons and electrons, it's not worth the time to argue-I'll go find 5 reliable sources in that many minutes, and that's that. Seraphimblade On 4/3/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)waterwiki.info> wrote:

I think the bigger problem there is "Did you look yourself first?" Usually, I've found when I'm unsure about something, a quick run through Google or Proquest is all it takes. In more than one instance though, that actually has revealed that what was there is wrong, or misleading, or incomplete. I don't think it's necessarily stupid to challenge something, even by a person who may not know much on it. After all, presumably, the -article- is written for those who may not know much on the subject. (If someone already knows the subject inside and out, what do they need our article for anyway?) In that case, it certainly never hurts to list sources, not only for validation, but also because they tend to go into much greater depth. On 4/3/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote: