Brian wrote:

Michael Snow wrote:

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SJ wrote:

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When you talk about "cite sources" never ever put it into connection to people editing and adding contents - it must be seen as something separate - many people are not able to "separate" things themselves they will combine and make something different out of all this.

What does this mean? How can citations be separate from adding content? Only the person adding a fact actually knows where it came from; other people can do nothing but guess.

Why does it matter where it came from? Except in cases where you're dealing with a primary source and it's essential to check the original, the choice of sources is just as subject to editing as the content. If I add content and cite a pathetically bad source, the source does not need to stay in the article even if it happens to be right (if it happens to be wrong and represents a significant point of view might be another matter). Other people can find other and often better sources even if they're unable to determine what the initial source was, and if the case involves a primary source then the information inherently points to where you need to look.

Many people don't seem to understand this and think there's some kind of rule that once a source has been used in the writing of an article, it must be cited or preserved in a References section for all time. Even normal scholarly practice doesn't require this (else probably most Wikipedia articles would need to cite other Wikipedia articles as references), and we in particular should be able to get past such limited ways of thinking. One of the virtues of our collaborative system is that there is very little need to try and divine the intent of an original author, and we needn't be beholden to that person in terms of choosing sources either.

On the contrary, any published books, such as.... Encyclopaedia Britannica, has every single one of the its facts checked against each individual source. This is a requirement of the publisher, and of the company. They don't make their sources public, so we have to trust them, but because they have checked each fact, it is usually alright to trust them. We, on the other hand, by default are accepting new information without any sources.

Perhaps I wasn't quite clear. I was addressing the separability of citations from content, but I wasn't suggesting removing source citations unless you're replacing them with better sources.

--Michael Snow