[WikiEN-l] Citationgate: expertise and verifiability

[charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com]

David Russell wrote

>It's not as if it is a brand
> new guideline that may be under dispute or unknown - WP:CITE has been
> around since 2002, if some editors decided to ignore it then it's no
> surprise that others objected to their work being elevated to GA status.

This ignores the actual history and debate around most policies: 'you mean we have to do A?'; 'No no, dear boy, it's just to stop B. I mean look at X and what has happened to the articles in contentious area P that you never look at.' 'I see, so I just get on and occasionally try and upgrade a few older articles that really do need help.' 'Just so, dear boy, and your fear that we shall all be writing limping prose spattered with footnotes is quite  unfounded.'

So one turns one's back and gets on with the actual business of adding one of many thousand pages that will turn a red link blue. Only to find that suddenly filling a much-needed gap in the references is somehow an issue.

Anyone here see a slight contradiction between having 100K featured articles, and having pedants running riot demanding citations we can reasonably do without?

Charles

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