[WikiEN-l] Let us not attack sources as unreliable without reason

[Tony Sidaway]

JAY JG said:
> >
> It is completely unacceptable, in my view, to add caveats to cited
> references as you did, stating "Attempts to verify Bard's attribution
> to the  UN Mediator's report have so far failed
> (http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/ab14d4aafc4e1bb985256204004f55fa!OpenDocument)",>  or as Bjorn did ("Attempts to verify Bard's attribution to the UN
> Mediator's  report have so far failed: see Talk:Estimates of the
> Palestinian Refugee  flight of 1948."), simply because you are
> unwilling or unable to expend the  necessary energy to look up the
> primary sources.  Moreover, telling people  to refer to Talk: pages is
> bad form, particulary (but not exclusively)  because Talk: pages change
> all the time, and are often archived.

If I see a reference in an encyclopedia I expect it to have been verified
by the author of the article, or else the author should state if he has
attempted to verify it and been unsuccessful.  This is important
information about the quality of the citation and must not be omitted.