We want you to enforce WP:CITE but not to use it to delete blocks of information. Start with something that seems dubious. Ask for a cite, delete it if neither you nor anyone else can find a source. Don't jump in and say the whole thing is no good. I did that once at Kennedy assassination theories. Didn't accomplish much. Still no decent sources, but a least a notice saying that we ought to find some.
Fred
On Jan 24, 2006, at 11:22 PM, Guettarda wrote:
I have decided to try to clean up the [[List of ethnic slurs]] article - it's a mess of uncited and apparently unverifiable information. In trying to get the ball rolling I have been opposed at (almost) every turn by an editor whose view of Wikipedia seems to be:
"''Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged defines an encyclopedia as 'a work that treats comprehensively all the various branches of knowledge and that is usually composed of individual articles arranged alphabetically'. Thus, in Wikipedia--the largest encyclopedia ever created--any knowledge can be included. Stroll by a library reference section and you will find encyclopedias of agriculture, of computing, of 'slang,' and so on. This article shows just how much encyclopedic Wikipedia is."
I tried to counter this with policy - WP:V, WP:CITE, and "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of nformation" to which I received the following reply:
"In any case, I'd encourage you not to live your life based on regulations, because life is too complicated to regulate. To do so makes one a [[wiktionary:simpleton|simpleton]]. In any case, regulations must be interpreted, and the consensus of the Wikipedia community appears to be that the rules should not be enforced. Since you are the first editor I have ever met to actually try to enforce these rules, you are in uncharted terrritory, for sure."
While this editor is relatively new s/he is not a total newbie - s/ he has over 1300 edits, been editing for several months. While I realise that WP:V and WP:CITE tend to only get a lot of attention in content disputes (the Intelligent design article being the one where I have seen it most) the idea that "the consensus of the Wikipedia community appears to be that the rules should not be enforced" just boggles the mind. While this editor appears to live at the opposite end of the world from the AFD addicts, I suspect that both of these are symptoms of an underlying problem of people who don't appear to be here to write a high-quality encyclopaedia. Suddenly I long to argue with POV-pushers - I would rather argue the validity of references than have someone tell me that consensus is that we don't need references...
Wow.
Ian _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l