[Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE

[Ray Saintonge]

Brian wrote:

> Matt Brown wrote:
>
>> I think there is a good deal of un-necessary panic going around about
>> this USA Today thing.  Did it really tell us anything new?  No. 
>> Misinformation in rarely visited articles has ALWAYS been a problem.
>
> Yes, but it doesn't mean that we shouldn't do anything about it. We 
> know about it, now let's fix it. 

Fixing it is not the same as burying it. 

>> Let's not run around like headless chickens because some journalist
>> found that conspiracy-theorist things had been put into his Wikipedia
>> article.
>
> That journalist writes for the most read paper in the US. He tells 
> everyone that Wikipedia is useless. People read that and believe that 
> Wikipedia is useless. This is a fact that we have to face, not ignore 
> out of pride. 

He's not the first one to say that Wikipedia is "useless", and I'm sure 
he won't be the last.  If the critic makes specific observations enough 
will notice to do something about those points.  We will never silence 
the ones who just make general comments no matter how good we get.  As 
long as we threaten to undermine their vested interests they will 
continue the criticism.

>> Fact is: Wikipedia's improving.  At quite a tremendous rate, in fact. 
>> It's easy to forget (a) the magnitude of the task, and (b) how bad we
>> were even a year ago.
>
> We can easily get to a point in time when we will be overwhelmed by 
> the number of editors and new content, and are wishing that we had 
> taken some sort of measures early on, rather than sit back and boast 
> about improvements. 

So who's sitting back and boasting?  Those improvements have happened.  
Accepting that does not mean that everybody stops making improvements.  
Editors just need to stick to what they're good at instead of worrying 
about what they feel others are not doing.

Ec