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

[Daniel P. B. Smith]

> From: Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com>
>
>
> On Sep 18, 2006, at 10:00 AM, Carl Peterson wrote:
>> Perhaps the slogan should be "verified truth" or "verifiable
>> truth." This
>> puts them both on an equal plane and requires both.
>
> I was thinking of something like "truth is ensured by verifiability,"
> actually.
>
> -Phil

Verifiable sources do not ensure truth. (It's not clear to me that  
there's any way to ensure truth... you know, observer A says it's a  
wave, observer B says it's a particle... blind men... elephant... etc.)

What verifiable sources do is to enable the reader to _make a  
judgement_ of the probable truth of the fact.

That's why it's much more important to have _a_ source, _any_ source,  
than to have a reliable source. As long as there's some kind of  
source _the reader can judge its reliability._ Of course, the better  
the source, the more readers will judge that the fact is probably  
accurate, so the more reliable the source, the better.