[WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

[Matt Brown]

On 8/14/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Im not sure on the stats, but it is my impression that this demand for
> verifiability is 1) deletionistic 2) one sided, and not applied to one's
> own person and 3) comes with some attached notion of "reliable sources" by
> which material from any deemed "unreliable" sources can be deleted.

I do agree by and large that WP:V and WP:CITE can be used as clubs to
beat one's opponents with.  That's the problem with rules and
policies.

I'd also add that it's only human nature, and no evidence of malice,
that someone will consider what to them is 'obviously true' (i.e.
their preferred version of things) as needing less proof and citation,
but will require extraordinary levels of proof, citation and
reliability for things they believe 'obviously false' (i.e. someone
else's version of things).

I also find the 'Reliable Sources' concept, while having some merit,
to be a concept vigorously over-pushed because of its usefulness in
winning the wars on some controversial areas of Wikipedia.  It's the
hard and fast rules of 'THIS type of source is automatically reliable,
while THIS type of source is automatically unreliable' that I have
issues with.

E.g. absolute and utter hogwash is regularly published in newspapers.
Even, though less frequently perhaps, in world-renowned newspapers.
Yet, by some versions of Reliable Sources, newspapers are
automatically in the reliable category.

-Matt