[WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 41, Issue 38

[Ken Arromdee]

On Tue, 5 Dec 2006, Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
> > Yes, but the case I'm worried about is one where the targeted  
> > article is
> > not libelous or about living people, still would have content if the
> > questionable material is removed, and actually does have sources,  
> > but which
> > are not referenced in the recommended one-footnote-per-sentence  
> > way.  The
> > policy is letting people use the rules to disrupt by picking any of  
> > that
> > 80% of articles and saying "you'd better source this, now, or I put  
> > your
> > article up for deletion."
> Nothing about the verifiability policy requires _inline_ sources.

But that's how it normally is interpreted.

[[Video game crash of 1983]] has gotten even stranger.  The user wishing to
delete the article has *admitted that the material he's asking for sources
for is correct*, and still wants to delete the article unless people provide
him with sources for individual statements.

(And the same user, on another article about another subject, objected to
someone else's request for individual citations on the grounds that the
request for sources was just being used as a "blunt instrument" and that the
information was already well-known to someone like him knowledgeable in the
field!)

There's a difference between saying "we should source articles" and "we should
give users the power to force others to source articles".  It's so much easier
to tell people to do something than to do it yourself that this often
just amounts to legalized disruption.