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

[Phil Sandifer]

On Sep 17, 2006, at 2:14 AM, David Mestel wrote:

> On 17/09/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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.)
>
> 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.  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...

It should be noted what IAR means, though. The heart of IAR is that  
the rules are not and cannot be a substitute for actually thinking.  
Carelessly leaving out sources is not following IAR. Citing J.  
Michael Straczynski's web posts in a Babylon 5 article because you  
know they're reliable no matter what [[WP:RS]] says is following IAR.

Put another way, following policy for policy's sake violates IAR.

-Phil