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

[Phil Sandifer]

On Jan 25, 2007, at 2:42 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:

>> If Susan can make the edit from memory, we're good.
>
> No, we're not good. That's the whole point. People's memories were
> reliable enough when Wikipedia first started and nobody actually used
> it for anything. That's no longer the case. If we want to be a
> credible encyclopedia, we need our facts to come from reliable sources
> (citing them isn't the important part, that's just a way to prove the
> important bit - that the fact came from a reliable source).
>
> There seems to be a serious misunderstanding of what "source" means. A
> source isn't somewhere people can go to verify the fact, it is where
> the fact came from. Citing sources is easy, because you will always
> have the source with you when you write the article (if you think you
> don't, then it means the source is your memory, in which case you
> aren't using a reliable source and shouldn't add the fact). The
> problem isn't that people aren't citing reliable sources, the problem
> is that they aren't *using* reliable sources.

You are advocating the complete abandonment of the principles that  
underly Wikipedia.

"You can edit this page right now." That's the mantra. That's the  
key. That's what got us where we are. It's foolish to give up on the  
thing that made us succeed where other things (Nupedia) failed.

-Phil