[WikiEN-l] CSD A7 and software programs

[Eugene van der Pijll]

K P schreef:
> Right now there is a place for some unsourced information, namely in
> articles tagged that they're unsourced, or "let the reader beware."

That is encouraging a dangerous perception: the place for unsourced
information is in articles with {{unsourced}} on top, and therefore
Wikipedia guarantees that articles that do not have a template are
correct.

Let's take a random article: [[Shoshone National Forest]]. It contains
in the first sentence the assertion that it "spans nearly 2.5 million
acres (10,000 km²)". This "fact" is not cited, is not repeated (and
cited) later in the article, and cannot be found on any of the sites in
"General references". In other words, it is unsourced, even though the
article is not tagged (presumably; I have made the {{unsourced}}
template invisible in my personal css).

That is no problem however, because if this fact was really important
for me, I wouldn't trust Wikipedia anyway, whether it is tagged or not.
"Let the reader beware" should be the attitude for all of Wikipedia;
sources cited or not.

> A lot of the obvious solutions (all information has to be sourced) detract
> >from what I see as the primary Wikipedia force that will eventually make it
> THE most useful site on the Internet: anyone can edit.

"eventually"? It may already be. Because anyone can edit.

Eugene