http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gen¹³ is a more or less totally unsourced article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cadmus is also a more or less totally unsourced article. It is my sense, and I suspect that others who read the articles will agree, that [[Gen13]] is a toe-curling atrocity that should be hacked to ribbons, whereas [[Project Cadmus]] is an OK start. There are many reasons for this - [[Gen13]] is a sputtering mess of subtle POV-pushing, making lots of claims about the social circumstance the comics were coming out in. [[Project Cadmus]] sticks basically to the question of what this thing is, where it's appeared, and what it was doing there. [[Gen13]] has the tone of a fan essay, [[Project Cadmus]] of something from a DC-Universe encyclopedia. What's further interesting here is that [[Gen13]] is trying to be the better article - lots of sections on real-world stuff, less in- universe focus. [[Project Cadmus]] is much more in-universe. But it's also the better article in practice. Curiously, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Juggernaut_Bitch%21%21 is sourced and worse than both of them - written in a totally inappropriate style, ridiculous captions, and, despite being well- sourced to things that might answer the question, totally lacking in any answer to "who cares?" Moral of the story: differing quality and style of articles have different sourcing needs - not just in terms of what makes a good source, but in terms of what sources are needed. At some points in an article's development what it needs most are sources. At others what it needs are clean-ups, or additions of whole new sections and facets of the article, or other things. There is no one-size-fits all solution, and sometimes complaining about the wrong thing is just ridiculous - of the three articles, only [[Gen13]] really needs sourcing right now. Only [[Project Cadmus]] needs heavy refocusing on an out-of-universe perspective. And only [[The Juggernaut Bitch!!]] needs the tender, loving care offered to articles on AfD. We need to stop trying to craft general solutions to all articles and start realizing that articles develop in different orders and on different paths. Solutions that fix a problem we're seeing in one area of the encyclopedia should not be crafted with the intention that they will expand to encompass other areas. With nearly two million articles, top-down editorial control just isn't plausible. We need to abandon - immediately - the quest for broadly reaching editorial mandates like "source everything" or "remove all X" and start figuring out what areas of the encyclopedia are having what problems and figuring out what solutions we can craft for those problems and those problems specifically. The questions we need to ask aren't "how do we fix BLPs" but "How do we fix the articles on actors from Star Trek up?" (Because those articles likely share a pool of editors, and thus also likely share a pool of strengths and weaknesses) This is an ENTIRELY new dynamic for how to think about editorial problems on Wikipedia. It means something is going to have to happen that, previously, hasn't happened - the sorts of editors who subscribe to and post to the mailing list (editors who tend to be interested in the big picture of Wikipedia) are going to have to learn to talk to the sorts of editors who only do work on articles related to DC comics. They're a very different bunch - full of local concerns that most of us don't care about, and generally mistrustful of the logic "Well, I can't let you do X because then some unknown group of people over here might do X and that would be bad." They're often ambivalent or hostile towards bits of policy - go ahead and try explaining in- universe perspective to a rabid editor of My Little Pony articles (to pick something I've never even looked at). But they're also well- meaning, dedicated, and write most of our articles. We need, very badly, to start thinking about how to implement projects of repairing Wikipedia on local levels. This isn't going to be done by policy either - it's going to be done by figuring out ways of going into the various trenches and working well with people who, in some cases, seem to be on a different planet. A very well-meaning planet, mind you, but a different one. So what can we do? What can we put into place that facilitates this sort of local engagement? -Phil