Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 10/3/05, Michael Turley wrote:
Anyone have any good ideas of how better to encourage people to cite sources?
Make verifiability a key policy, and egregious edit-warring to insert unsourced statements a blockable offence.
Great idea!
This would swing the balance too far in favor of the deletionists. The unsourced statement would have to be unreasonable. Obvious common knowledge statements should not have to be sourced, and someone edit warring, demanding that every petty statement be sourced is being unreasonable, and should not be rewarded by being allowed to impose a burden upon other editors. -- Silverback
On 10/4/05, actionforum@comcast.net actionforum@comcast.net wrote:
This would swing the balance too far in favor of the deletionists. The unsourced statement would have to be unreasonable. Obvious common knowledge statements should not have to be sourced, and someone edit warring, demanding that every petty statement be sourced is being unreasonable, and should not be rewarded by being allowed to impose a burden upon other editors. -- Silverback
There are worse war cries than "source?"
-- geni
This would swing the balance too far in favor of the deletionists. The unsourced statement would have to be unreasonable. Obvious common knowledge statements should not have to be sourced, and someone edit warring, demanding that every petty statement be sourced is being unreasonable, and should not be rewarded by being allowed to impose a burden upon other editors. -- Silverback
The simple solution to someone edit warring demanding that a statement be sourced is to add a reference at the bottom of the article. If the statement really is obvious then it should be simple to find a source.
Yes, someone gaming the system by removing something which they know to be true rather than just adding the source themselves should be reprimanded. But at the same time, a better solution than edit warring with that person would be to just add the source.
I don't think anyone's claiming that you have to cite sources for every fact within the main body of the article. I don't think [1] that articles [2] should look [3] anything like [4] this. [5] Rather for something "obvious", it should be enough to cite the source at the bottom of the page.
I'm saying all this as though it's a proposal, but it's really already policy. See [[Wikipedia:Verifiable]], especially #Checking content.
Anthony
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actionforum@comcast.net wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 10/3/05, Michael Turley wrote:
Anyone have any good ideas of how better to encourage people to cite sources?
Make verifiability a key policy, and egregious edit-warring to insert unsourced statements a blockable offence.
Great idea!
This would swing the balance too far in favor of the deletionists. The unsourced statement would have to be unreasonable. Obvious common knowledge statements should not have to be sourced, and someone edit warring, demanding that every petty statement be sourced is being unreasonable, and should not be rewarded by being allowed to impose a burden upon other editors.
Oh, I don't know - we managed to find a source for the statement "the Earth is round" :)
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actionforum@comcast.net wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 10/3/05, Michael Turley wrote:
Anyone have any good ideas of how better to encourage people to cite sources?
Make verifiability a key policy, and egregious edit-warring to insert unsourced statements a blockable offence.
Great idea!
This would swing the balance too far in favor of the deletionists. The unsourced statement would have to be unreasonable. Obvious common knowledge statements should not have to be sourced, and someone edit warring, demanding that every petty statement be sourced is being unreasonable, and should not be rewarded by being allowed to impose a burden upon other editors.
Not at all. The deletionists tend to argue on the basis of notability. I prefer to avoid the question of whether a statement is reasonable; that's just too subjective. While a person could put in "obvious common knowledge statements" without initially showing a source they could and should still be open to challenge. There is nothing wrong with having one or two "standard works" as reference to cover the essentials of the subject. Thus an article about physics could, through the category page show references to the standard works. The individuals who make unreasonable demands should be dealt with separately. Major policy directions should not be held at the mercy of a handful of extremists. The responsibility of an editor to search for sources could then be limited to those standard sources.
Ec