[WikiEN-l] [[WP:V]] and [[WP:RS]] are destroying Wikipedia

[Phil Sandifer]

Pardon my subject - it is only slightly exaggerated.

Obviously [[WP:V]] and (to a lesser extent) [[WP:RS]] are absolutely  
vital policies that cannot be discarded. On the other hand, in their  
current form they are abominations that fundamentally undermine key  
aspects of Wikipedia's mission.

The problems with the pages are threefold.

1) They actively encourage removal of material that is accurate.
2) Their definitions of acceptable material were written with an eye  
towards only a handful of Wikipedia's articles, and render large  
portions of the site functionally un-editable.
3) They increase the burden of responsibility far beyond that which  
can reasonably be asked of the casual editor who does most of the  
heavy lifting for Wikipedia.

In order.

1) They actively encourage removal of material that is accurate

Admittedly, our standard for inclusion is "verifiability, not truth."  
We ought not, however, fall into the trap of deciding that we are  
therefore against truth. Our goal is to offer the sum total of human  
knowledge. If information is true and significant, we ought be trying  
to find a way to get it in.

Both policies direly need a basic common sense check - don't  
challenge material you don't actually doubt the accuracy of. Editors  
should read skeptically and critically, but they should not go  
removing things for the sake of removing them. There should, of  
course, remain the exception for BLP. We should be clear that this  
exception is for legal reasons, and out of a desire to be respectful  
citizens of the world we're offering Wikipedia to.

But to allow and endorse this sort of hatchet work as a general case  
is far too much of a gift to the clueless. We need to codify that our  
sourcing policies exist to improve Wikipedia - not to give the most  
obsessive of us a job gutting Wikipedia.

2) Their definitions of acceptable material were written with an eye  
towards only a handful of Wikipedia's articles, and render large  
portions of the site functionally un-editable.

The majority of our policies in this area, and [[WP:RS]] is by far  
the worse offender here, were clearly written to provide us needed  
protection against nutjobs on our more pathological articles. They're  
excellent policies for keeping the Israel/Palestine articles sane,  
keeping the LaRouchies and Scientologists at bay, and telling Gene  
Ray that he should take nature's four-sided harmonious time cube  
elsewhere.

Unfortunately, that's a fraction of our articles. Most of our  
articles do not need that kind of protection, and that kind of  
protection is gravely dangerous to them. My favorite example is  
[[Spoo]] - a featured article that we ran on the frontpage on 4/1/06.  
Spoo is a fictional food source from the television show Babylon 5.  
The thing about B5 is that there's a huge amount of information  
availbale. J. Michael Straczynski, the creator of B5, has made a  
great deal of stuff public about the show. The only problem is that  
he did it on Usenet. Now, there is nobody in the world that doubts  
that those Usenet postings were made by JMS. It's dead-on fact. But  
[[WP:RS]] rules out such posts in all cases. Which means, by a rigid  
definition of [[WP:RS]], we have to go scrag [[Spoo]].

This is not the only case of this. I remember a nasty fight over  
[[Able and Baker]] regarding whether the website for Dayfree Press, a  
webcomics syndicate, was a reliable source on Dayfree Press. Or, and  
this is possibly the most ludicrous thing I've ever seen argued on  
Wikipedia, the assertion that it is not verifiable that a post was  
made to a talk page on Wikipedia. Not even raising the question of  
the identity of the poster (Which would have been a sensible debate  
to have) - someone was asserting that the existence of the post  
itself was not verifiable.

The problem here is that the reliability of sources is a tremendously  
subtle issue. When dealing with Babylon 5, Usenet posts are  
tremendously reliable. When dealing with Scientology, a personal  
website is one of the most important sources in existence. J. Michael  
Stracyznski's news posts are reliable. Other people's aren't. It's  
not a clear-cut matter, and we can't write policy that's meant to be  
applied like a sledgehammer to cover it. The fact that blog posts  
suck as sources on topic A does not mean they suck on topic B.

Every other policy we have on Wikipedia explicitly gives editors a  
wide berth to interpret it on a case-by-case basis. This is, for  
instance, the whole reason [[WP:NPOV]] works. But increasingly,  
[[WP:V]] and [[WP:RS]] are written to be applied by machine. We need  
to return to trusting that editors will be able to work out what a  
reliable source is on a topic by topic basis, given a set of general  
guidelines on the matter. I have in the past recommended basing these  
guidelines on _The Craft of Research_, a book published by UChicago  
Press. This has long been one of the standard academic research  
manuals. It's flexible, sensible, and respected - exactly what we  
want and need.

3) They increase the burden of responsibility far beyond that which  
can reasonably be asked of the casual editor who does most of the  
heavy lifting for Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is supposed to be editable by anyone, and we have  
repeatedly stressed the importance of keeping it open. Unfortunately,  
with our zeal for sourcing everything and placing ridiculously high  
demands on our sources, we are increasingly threatening that ideal.  
It is not, under the rules as written, possible to edit Wikipedia  
without access to a substantial reference library. Someone who  
stumbles upon an article and sees an omission is no longer encouraged  
to just add it  - they're encouraged to go make a research trip to  
add it.

This is, of course, not how it actually works. 99% of our content has  
been and will always be people working from personal knowledge. It  
was how Wikipedia was built, and it's how it will always remain, no  
matter how we rewrite the rules. We need to remember that as editors,  
though. The goal should not be to scrap 99% of the contributions. It  
should be to remove things that are too troublesome to include  
without reliable sources (As defined on a case by case basis), and to  
try to find reliable sources for everything else.

In essence, we have written a set of policies that fail to reflect  
how we do work, should work, or could possibly work. And, due to the  
frighteningly large number of contributors who, given a piece of bad  
policy, will follow it rigidly without thinking about it, this is a  
solidly dangerous thing. (Something to remember: IAR is our most  
ignored rule.)

What can we do to repair these policies to better reflect and engage  
reality? Obviously, as I said, we cannot abandon the policies -  
[[WP:V]] is essential, and [[WP:RS]] has the potential to be a vital  
guideline. But the current approach clearly does not work. So we need  
to rethink it.

-Phil