Thomas Dalton wrote:
It is far
easier to source a text than to gather sources and write a
new article from scratch. Sourcing is grunt work where writing a new
article requires creativity and whatnot.
That kind of thinking is one of the biggest problem with Wikipedia at
the moment. Sourcing should always come *before* writing. The source
is where the information came from, that's what "source" means, so you
have to have the source before you can write the article. Adding
sources afterwards is a way of fixing a problem - unsourced articles -
it should not be a part of the standard process of writing articles.
The problem should never be created in the first place.
There are benefits and drawbacks to either approach. Some simply can
maintain a better narrative flow if they wait until they are finished to
add the sourcing. They may have a stack of sources sitting beside their
computer, but not be sure which will be relevant until they are well
advanced intheir writing. Presumably they are making private notes as
they go along so that they will be able to add the references when they
get to the bottom of the article. If an article appears to be a work
that is actively in progress it is good etiquette to let the editor
finish what he is doing before complaining about missing sources.
Ec