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

[ScottL]

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 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. 


   If we have an article on missing the point compleetly in a 
discussion.  I propose we include this email under the subheadingin the 
article:

==Too clever to get the point==

Dalf