[WikiEN-l] The sky is blue {{citation needed}}

[Daniel P. B. Smith]

> From: Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com>

> But on the other hand, the "enforcement" of the policy
> has been getting so zealous lately that I don't have too much
> trouble imagining editor A saying "the sky is blue" and editor B
> demanding a verifiable citation lest the assertion be deleted as
> original research.
>
> It "ought" to be the case that "obvious" facts, which "everybody
> knows", can be inserted without explicit citation.

Obviously "the sky is blue" should not be deleted. But it's a rather  
bad example for your purpose, as I recently noted on a talk page.

In the first place, the sky is "not" always blue, and therefore this  
is a "fact" that is not really quite true. In the second place, as is  
so often the case of things that "can't be sourced because they're  
just common knowledge," it is ''very'' easily sourced:

"the blue sky is so commonplace that it is taken for granted" {{cite  
book|title=A Field Guide to the Atmosphere|first=Vincent J.| 
last=Schaefer|coauthors=John A. Day|year=1998|publisher=Houghton  
Mifflin Field Guides|id=ISBN 0395976316}}

I also found:

The poet [[Robert Service]] says "while the blue sky bends above/ 
You've got nearly all that matters;" songwriter [[Irving Berlin]]  
wrote of "[[Blue Skies (song)|Blue Skies]] smiling at me," airmen fly  
into the [[The U.S. Air Force (song)|wild blue yonder]].

{{cite book|title=Collected Poems of Robert Service|first=Robert| 
last=Service|year=1940|publisher=G. P. Putnam's Sons|id=ISBN  
0-399-15015-3}},</ref>

For the sky _not_ always being blue: Matthew 16:2, Jesus says to the  
Pharisees "When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for  
the sky is red."

"At twilight, salmon reds, oranges, purples, white-yellows, and many  
shades of blue can be seen."

{{cite book|title=Light and Colour in the Outdoors|first=M. G. J.| 
last=Minnaert|origyear=1974|year=1993|publisher=Springer-Verlag| 
id=ISBN 0-387-97935-2}} p. 295

And songwriter [[Oscar Hammerstein II|Oscar Hammerstein]]'s famously  
wrote of "when the sky is a bright canary yellow."<ref>{{cite book| 
title=American Musical|first=Marc|last=Bauch|publisher=Tectum Verlag| 
id=ISBN 382888458X}} </ref>

It took me less than ten minutes to turn up the "serious" sources  
(Schaeffer and Minnaert) another fifteen to find the rest. If  
something is really a commonly known fact, it is just not that hard  
to source. And the effort to do so _often_ yields dividends.

This is not to say that requests for citations can't be abused. But,  
if I am an editor, and I inserted something without a source because  
I didn't really think it needed one, and someone marked it "citation  
needed," my response would be to source it. This has happened to me,  
and it's what I've done. Except in one case... where I couldn't find  
one... and so I removed the item myself.