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

[Daniel Mayer]

--- Sabine Cretella <sabine_cretella at yahoo.it> wrote:
> Well: so who likes to check things can go and add references - 

And how are the people who add references going to know what sources were used to add the content
in the first place? I can't read the mind of others and I don't think many other people can do
that either. 

> requiring it from anyone will have very negative results ... and this 
> will mean that many of the people I was just getting on becoming 
> interested in giving their expertise to Wikipedia will not be there ... 
> months of work for nothing ... 

I assume you want them to work on the Italian Wikipedia, no? Any referencing requirement would be
decided on a per wiki basis and start with the very largest wikis. Other wikis may still need to
encourage growth in any way they can. So adding such a requirement prematurely may do more harm
than good. 

And such a requirement would not prevent anybody from adding unsourced material. It would just
allow people who like to tag things - and boy does at least the English Wikipedia have plenty of
those folks - to tag those articles as needing sources. The tag would serve two roles:
1) Tell readers to treat the article very critically,
2) Tell editors that the article needs references (hopefully the original author will see that and
add the referenes; if not, then others would need to check each fact).
It would also help to encourage a culture of sourcing material that will only help us attain and
retain more accurate content.

Again ; language versions at different stages of development need to follow different policies on
this type of thing. The great majority of wikis will be better served by encouraging growth more
than quality, but the ones that are already huge can afford to be a bit more picky. Once the other
wikis get huge, then they could start to be more picky as well.

-- mav


		
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