[WikiEN-l] Question on citation policy

[Gregory Maxwell]

On 8/21/06, zero 0000 <nought_0000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Now someone comes along and slaps a "citation required"
> tag on it.  Someone else takes off the tag on the grounds
> that the WP article on Babe Ruth is linked right there and
> has copious citations that covers this fact.
>
> Who is right?  We aren't supposed to use Wikipedia as a
> source, but I always took that to mean that Wikipedia is
> not an -ultimate- source for anything, not that a wikilink
> can never be an adequate way to show where the source
> for something can be found.

If someone came around and slapped the tag on it I see two possibilities:
1) They didn't know that the information was right there.
2) They know something we don't, considered it insufficient.

So why not try something somewhat novel on Wikipedia... Have a chat
with them rather than revert warring.

If they after being shown the other article the still find the
citation insufficient... go ahead and humor them and copy the
reference over. It won't hurt.

Our citation policy needs to be aggressively worded, and in undefined
cases default to 'cite it', because it is our best 'policy hammer'
against kooks adding original research. At the same time that makes it
useful for the disruption of Wikipedia.

As a result we must be aggressive in preventing people from misusing
the policy to disrupt... but one case does not demonstrate a pattern
of disruption.

If someone makes a practice of going around and {{fact}}ing obvious
things, then they are due an RFC, and if that fails, I'd hope arbcom
would be quite willing to censure them.