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

[Stephen Streater]

On 17 Sep 2006, at 08:29, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:

> "Matt Brown" wrote
>
>> I don't disagree that sources should be reliable ones.  I disagree
>> with the idea that reliability can be so rigidly defined, against
>> common sense.
>
> Hear! Hear!
>
> Phil Sandifer's original post on this is well-argued, though I  
> don't particularly wish to follow him onto the ground of webcomics.
>
> Common sense needs to apply, sooner rather than later. It indicates  
> things like, oh, in religion and politics you are not going to have  
> people 100% agreed onw what a reliable source is (do you believe  
> the Bible or the BBC, sort of thing). Almost any source can be  
> _fallible_ anyway. So we err generally in the direction of  
> including sources, assuming a critical reader.
>
> Common sense also says that policies that are written in very black- 
> and-white terms do not necessarily trump others, which are  
> apparently wishy-washy and aspirational and don't help you win your  
> edit war on content.

Common sense may be gaining ground.
Different articles are different, and while
we are generally cleaning up older articles,
creating too big a hurdle for new stubs could
take off the bottom rungs of the ladder.

One idea which has been mooted
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fresheneesz)
is that each sentence has a rating for reliability.

I haven't considered this in depth, but I could
imagine that we have a preference option
which used colour (a bit revolutionary I know!)
to show the status of different sentences.

So POV could be red, independently verified
source material could be black, unchallenged
but unsourced could be blue etc.

This would allow the benefits of truth without
disguising the need for reliable sources. It
would also discourage inexpert editors from
removing good stuff.