[WikiEN-l] Zero information is preferred to misleading or false information

[Steve Bennett]

On 5/18/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> Nowadays you don't even have to go to a library to look up journal
> articles.  Wikipedians must be getting the information they put into
> articles from somewhere, and I find it hard to believe that more than
> a miniscule portion of it is straight from their memory.


I know heaps of stuff that isn't in Wikipedia. And I didn't get it from
reading "reliable sources". To take another example, [[Bouchon]]. Any person
who has spent more than a couple of days in Lyon knows what a bouchon is (a
typically Lyonnais restaurant). Yet Wikipedia had nothing on them. I didn't
feel like I was going out on a limb creating a stub about a bouchon saying
that they serve very meaty dishes that many foreigners wouldn't necessarily
appreciate. Of course for the details on exactly what they do and don't
serve, I went to a book.

I'm offering this account not as what should be done, but what I believe is
current practice - but the use of a book is even more stringent than most, I
suspect.

The interpretation of WP:V that says that any information that is not
accompanied by a citation should never enter Wikipedia is, IMHO, novel. I
would have nothing against that becoming the official interpretation, but
it's not even close to being the dominant one at the moment.

The ad hoc system in place now is completely backwards.  You're
> supposed to get your sources first, *then* write the article.  Believe
> it or not I'm completely in agreement with Jimbo that unsourced
> material should not be in Wikipedia articles.  But just telling people
> to do a better job or "be kicked out of the project just for being
> lousy writers" is not a very productive way of achieving that.
>


If we don't want unsourced material, why have we tolerated it so long?

Steve