On Thu, 17 Aug 2006 19:04:17 -0700 (PDT)
stevertigo <vertigosteve(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
Calls to CITE are too often just smokescreen for a
weak
or incivil or POV argument,
And objections to CITE are sometimes just smokescreens for
disagreement with the verifiability policy itself.
Indeed. And calls for verifiability are themselves sometimes
just a smokescreen for pushing a POV.
-Stevertigo
Again: The problem isn't WP:CITE. Reliability of sources
and necessity of citation are purely subjective. Someone
with the POV that the sky is yellow will call the NYT
unreliable on the matter of sky-color, and if the NYT
offers a picture of the blue sky, he'll call it fabricated
and promptly find tons of evidence that the NYT used
doctored pictures in the past. If scientists proclaim
the sky is blue, they'll be called fringe, countered
by someone saying the sky isn't blue, formulated in
a confusing manner, and eventually removed in an
article cleanup.
This isn't a problem you can ever hope to resolve
by changing wp:cite. Its a problem intrinsic to human
nature that people tend to adapt their perception
of reality to their ideas of the world, rather than
adapting their idea. This is because it is,
psychologically, easier and cheaper to manage one's
perception than to manage one's ideas of the world.