[Foundation-l] Wikipedia ... but where are you going ... (was:Enforcing WP:CITE ...)

[Daniel Mayer]

--- Sabine Cretella <sabine_cretella at yahoo.it> wrote:
> Fine ... wonderful .... so just go ahead restricting contributors - go 
> into your dead-end position and you will see that Wikipedia will follow 
> Nupedia - and that someone considered a bit mad will just take over the 
> contents and allow people to edit like it was done up to now.

Requiring people to add references does not needlessly restrict them. It improves the content. We
are here to serve a goal; create the world's largest and best free encyclopedia. Adding references
helps us toward that goal. 

Nupedia was on one end of the spectrum and Wikipedia is on the other. Nupedia died because it was
too restrictive. Wikipedia needed to be very open in order to encourage growth. That was fine when
we were small and hardly anybody knew of us or used our content. Now things have changed; millions
of people use Wikipedia every month and expect it to be accurate. Requiring references helps us
attain higher quality.
 
> Come on: let them talk - let's just go ahead working without listening 
> to them doing our best. The day is not far and they will need to stop 
> because Wikipedia will show them that liberty and democracy survives any 
> attack.

We are already famous, so bad press is simply bad (esp right before a fund drive). But beyond
that, this particular incident showed a place where our review system failed and failed badly. 

If we required references, then somebody from RC patrol would have tagged the the offending
article as unsourced and subject to eventual deletion. That tells readers to not at all trust what
is in that article and encourages editors to check the article and add references. I see nothing
wrong with that. 

Like it or not we are being used as a major reference source. Readers rely on us to be accurate.
Adding references helps us do that. 

-- mav


		
__________________________________________ 
Yahoo! DSL – Something to write home about. 
Just $16.99/mo. or less. 
dsl.yahoo.com