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

[George Herbert]

On 1/25/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 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.
>
> The key underlying principle is making a free encyclopedia available
> to everyone. "Anyone can edit" is simply a means to an end - it is
> secondary to the goal of making an encyclopedia.
>
> We should be working to make things better for the readers, not the
> contributors. Relaxing our rules on using reliable sources would be
> great for the contributors, but makes the website pretty much useless
> for the readers.

Not having any articles on subjects is not doing the readers any good
service at all.

Having unsourced but generally accurate articles is better.

Having sourced articles is better.  Having sourced articles which have
been fact checked is still better.

Having sourced articles which have been fact checked and written by
good writers with a feel for the field is best.

Wikipedia is an evolution along that series of steps.

Nupedia is an attempt to go straight to the last one, and has 20-ish
articles last I heard (not that recently).


-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com