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

[Ryan Norton]

> 1) They actively encourage removal of material that is accurate

While I mostly agree with your argument here especially [[Spoo]], if
one edits the articles Jimmy watches the chance of you getting a
mailing list post or a usenet group post source to stick is very low,
even if it isn't documented anywhere else.

For example (just one of several :)), I ran into this problem trying to 
explain
a key part of the [[Merkey]] history as there is sort of a "reliable source
blackout" on some periods that were clearly "notable" to the subject.

So, perhaps that is the "de-facto policy" there.

> 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 disagree and IMHO anyone who is a fact-tagger for a while on more
mundane articles will see the issue quickly.

Often, when I would {{fact}}-tag something,
someone would remove the tag and instead go into a five-page essay on
why a certain point was "correct" or not. Usually it was, but sometimes
it clearly was dubious; and usually needed attribution anyway. It is
difficult to attribute something when you don't know its source :).

The good part is that usually they just go "OH!" when you let them
know that all they needed to do was source the thing; which ends up
with a solid source almost every time :).

Maybe this has something to do with David's theory about the encyclopedia
being written mostly by anons/new users (my own theory is that it is sort of 
40/60,
but anyway). I'm assuming at some point, if this is true, then there will be 
some kind
of software measure to make sure something added is sourced.