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

[Matt Brown]

On 9/16/06, David Mestel <david.mestel at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have to disagree with you on the IAR point - I just clicked on the
> "random article" button five times, and not one of the resulting
> articles had a single source.

To be truly valid, though, you'd have to only count articles created
after sourcing became explicitly required.

>I think that our problem may be that,
> because we place such a great demand on our sources, people don't
> bother to source articles at all.  Perhaps we need to demand less in
> order to achieve more...

I've long said that any source is better than none.  With a source,
it's traceable.   I fear that our pages about sourcing and how to do
it are so complicated as to be offputting.   They make it seem that
the only way allowed to source things is to go through a very
complicated procedure - rather than the Wiki way of 'do it the best
you can and other people can neaten it later'.

-Matt