[Foundation-l] Verifiability: Constitution?

[Christoph Seydl]

I assume that Jimbo means that only material that is verifiable with
reference to reliable, published sources should be used. And if we
remove all unsourced statements, Wikipedia will shrink and grow less
fast. However, there are reliable sources even for the most simple
objects. According to Norstedts svenska ordbok och uppslagsbok, a bucket
is a "cylindrical vessel with a carrying handle for the transport of
liquids sand or the like".

As Jimbo said, several editors will stop contributing, if all material
has to be sourced. At the same time, the motivation to provide sources
will increase, whereas there is almost no motivation to source
statements, if they will not be removed.

No matter how a codification of verifiability will look like, there
should be at least a statement on verifiability at Foundation Issues in
my opinion. There are several options how verifiability can be defined:
- Everything must be sourced, what Jimbo seems to prefer.
- Only critical material (e. g. negative information about living
  persons, disputed issues, hard facts, quotes,...) must be sourced.
  Statements on everyday objects (cf. bucket example) may not be
  sourced.
- Source what you like.
- Abolish sourcing at all.

Chris


Andre Engels wrote:
> 2006/9/17, Christoph Seydl <Christoph.Seydl at students.jku.at>:
>> Jimbo Wales says: "I can NOT emphasize this enough.    There seems to be
>> a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative
>> 'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs
>> a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be
>> sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of
>> negative information about living persons.    I think a fair number of
>> people need to be kicked out of the project just for being lousy
>> writers. (This is not a policy statement, just a statement of attitude
>> and frustration.)"
>> (http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-May/046433.html)
> 
> But how do you define 'can be sourced'? The only way that you can show
> that something can be sourced is by sourcing it. Does this mean that
> we should remove all unsourced statements from all articles? If so,
> there will be little Wikipedia left. If not, then what do we accept
> without source and what not?