Brian wrote:
Britannica has to defend every letter of it before they can get published. The same is true for all other major encyclopedias. Why wouldn't it be true for us? Aren't we trying to make an encyclopedia here?
Yeah, Nupedia tried that already.
The Wikipedia process is explicitly not to require perfection up front. Ideally, every fact would indeed be referenced. And if you can add references to an article, that's a great thing. If we end up with some system of vetting good articles, perhaps only well-referenced articles should be allowed to get the higher markings. Those are all fine, and all much different than prohibiting edits that are not meticulously referenced in the first place.
-Mark