You're reading a bit more into my words than I ever intended, but I'll lay off on the idealistic "we". I don't think Wikipedia is healthier without sourcing, but I'll allow for disagreement there. What we're dealing with is a conflict of visions of what Wikipedia ought to be. Do we strive for completeness and inclusiveness or for better sourcing and higher quality coverage? I identify more with the drive for quality, and I'm comfortable looking elsewhere for certain topics, which can't be covered in the way I think Wikipedia should.

I think a half-loaf is, for most purposes, better than no loaf at all. If an article is sourceable, then it should be. It may be that there are no "reliable" sources on an article, despite honest efforts. There are some topics that are just not covered by the subset of sources that have been defined as universally reliable. If Wikipedians are able to look for themselves from the "unreliable" sources and judge without too much trouble that, for the purpose of this particular article, those sources are sufficient, then I think they should do that rather than delete it. The historic argument against that is that Wikipedians are not experts on the quality of sources in a particular topic area and cannot make that kind of a call - but, really, I think this is getting less and less true all the time.

I disagree with your strong linking of "quality" and "better sourcing". For most users of Wikipedia, quality is going to mean accuracy, combined with actually covering the topic at all. Using only information from reliable sources is one way to achieve this, but I feel strongly that is not the _only_ way, and if Wikipedia's rules are such that it is, then they should be changed. It is stupid when we have to delete articles that nobody believes to be inaccurate on the basis of rules set up to ensure accuracy.

None of the above should be construed to imply that I support badly written, inaccurate articles that don't help users. I just think that there are plenty of topics out there that can't be "officially" sourced, but which we could nevertheless be covering, and well. Apply all the warnings you want to such articles, but give the users their half-loaf.

--- Laurence "GreenReaper" Parry http://greenreaper.co.uk/ - http://wikifur.com/