[WikiEN-l] Nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]

[Bryan Derksen]

MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> Also, if CITE and RS were to be nuked, there's not much point in keeping
> WP:V; and if verifiability goes out of the window, I might as well give up,
> because then Wikipedia will never be a accurate encyclopedia.

Verifiability is a goal, citations and sources are means to achieving
that goal. Getting rid of CITE and RS does not necessarily imply getting
rid of the goal of verifiability, it merely means changing the means by
which it is achieved. It doesn't even mean getting rid of citations, I
don't think anyone's suggesting that they be forbidden.

> A while back I said that I think sources by an article's subject are
> perfectly when they're used to back up content rather than the subject's
> claim of notability, which is basically a comment on reliable sources too.
> 
> I think that shows the page needs to be altered.

I suspect the "nuke CITE/RS" suggestion comes out of the same sort of
desire to loosen the current rules, just a little more extreme. I think
the "nuke the policy" position comes from the feeling that incremental
changes to existing policy will be too hard to pull off effectively and
so it's better to start from a clean slate.

I just spent two days trying to preserve a 1911 Britannica citation that
was removed because it wikilinked to [[Encyclopedia Britannica]] and
"Wikipedia is not a reliable source". When I finally managed (I think)
to convince the other editors that it wasn't actually meant to reference
our article about EB but rather the encyclopedia itself they removed it
anyway because it didn't specify which page in the encyclopedia was
being referenced. So I can definitely sympathize with this level of
frustration. :)