On Thu, 17 Aug 2006 19:04:17 -0700 (PDT) stevertigo vertigosteve@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.