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

[Steve Summit]

Daniel P.B. Smith wrote:
>> 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...

You're not in training to be a wikilawyer, are you? :-)

> 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," ...

Don't get me wrong; the policy I'd like to (and tend to) follow
is simply that you can post "obvious", uncited information as
long as you can get away with it.  No one will quibble with the
"obvious, everybody knows 'em" facts, and we're all happy.

But that works only as long as there aren't too many people
running around unreasonably slapping "citation needed" on things.
(Which is the point you already made when you said "This is not
to say that requests for citations can't be abused.")  There are
actually two subcases of this problem: (1) requests for citation
of contentious content coupled with highhanded rejection of
proffered sources as "unreliable" leading to the abuse of WP:V
as a censorship tool (i.e. the problem Stevertigo started the
"CITE nazis" thread by asking about), and (2) people dogmatically
insisting on references for "sky is blue" facts which every
reasonable editor thought was obvious, which although, you're
right, they usually can be sourced easily enough, eventually
leads to articles which are so heavily slathered with footnotes
and other references that they're cumbersome to read and just
*ugly*.  (As a friend was commenting about a featured article a
little while ago, "I suppose this is what all featured articles
are going to look like from now on -- littered with a welter of
footnote marks.  This is getting ridiculous.")