From: "Steve Bennett" stevagewp@gmail.com
On 11/30/06, Daniel P. B. Smith wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
From: "Steve Bennett" stevagewp@gmail.com
I don't think deleting accurate, high-quality, unreferenced material is in Wikipedia's best interests. Asking for a source, yes. Adding sources, yes. But *deleting* good material? No.
Unsourced material is not high-quality material.
I'll interpret that as "Uncited material can by definition never be considered 'high-quality material'."
Please don't.
And then I'll strongly disagree. Newspapers, encyclopaedias and many other sources of high-quality information regularly do not cite their sources. If we take one of our best featured articles and remove the references section, it is still much better than a shorter article that does cite its sources. And streets ahead of an article which false cites its sources...
What I meant is that _in Wikipedia,_ uncited material is not high- quality material.
_In Wikipedia,_ that's indeed by definition, and the "definition" in question is Wikipedia's verifiability policy.
The New York Times and the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ don't have such a policy.
Uncited material in The New York Times or the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ is high-quality material, because their mechanism for insuring quality is different. It involves a web of trust in which I trust these sources because I believe the editors make informed judgements on the credentials of contributors. It's not 100.000% true, but I assume that the Britannica only assigns articles to knowledgeable people--not to volunteers who walk in off the street attracted by an arch over their entrance that says "Edit this page." I assume that the New York Times accepts articles people with credentials as "journalists," earned by past performance on increasingly important assignments and/or training in a journalism school and/or adherence to a code of ethics.
Wikipedia is different, because Wikipedia does not select or judge the competence or credentials of its editors.
On 11/30/06, Daniel P. B. Smith wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
What I meant is that _in Wikipedia,_ uncited material is not high- quality material.
What do you mean by "high quality"?
_In Wikipedia,_ that's indeed by definition, and the "definition" in question is Wikipedia's verifiability policy.
You seem to mean "desirable". As opposed to "inherently worthwhile". Does a random visitor care whether we think the material is desirable or not?
Wikipedia is different, because Wikipedia does not select or judge the competence or credentials of its editors.
And it relies on its readers to form their own opinions about the accuracy of its articles. And providing sources helps that process. But it is not true that the absence of sources renders a given page "low quality".
Steve