[WikiEN-l] Verifiability - Case Study I

[charles matthews]

 "Steve Bennett"

> As the policy stands, I would argue for leaving it in
> the article, regardless of whether we can actually track down a source
> or not.

Well, I'm arguing that _asking the editor who inserted it_ is a kind of due 
diligence here.  Like, go to User Talk, write 'Hi, interested to know how 
you researched Hari's schooling'.  Before editing it out, after all of 72 
hours.  How much effort is that?  Well, you have to look at the Page 
History.

My list of mistakes:

-Not assuming good faith (i.e. leaping to conclusions about a possible 
fabrication of a banal fact)
-Not doing the collective things one does, to edit as a team on an article 
of common interest
-Being too reactive, and lack of sense of proportion
-No edit summaries
-No use of article Talk
-No use of User Talk
-Probable ignorance of the use of the Page History, leading to a narrow view 
of one's responsibilities in editing
-Misapprehension of Verifiability policy and its modalities
-Ignorance of policy on biographies, leading to a wild goose chase.

Now, some of these are _newbie mistakes_, and the User has not been bitten 
(perhaps a bit scratched - see interchanges on Talk:Johann Hari, with 
cattiness from Felix^2).   I would argue that just this isolation of 'thou 
may cut the unsourced' is a newbie-ism.  It's the 'other things being equal' 
context that lacks.

I hope our newbies actually move up the learning curve from there.  But it 
is much better to take WP:V as applying to one's own edits, to begin with. 
That could be said.

Charles