[WikiEN-l] "Articles that do not cite reliable published sources will be deleted."

[Bryan Derksen]

Cheney Shill wrote:
> Why not just start applying the policy?  Set a time limit. 
> No RS, delete.
...
> It seems like there has been an extended and unstated
> policy to create essentially article shells simply to get
> the article count up and increase Wikipedia's popularity.

I've created my share of stubs and this is not even remotely the reason
why. In most cases it's because I went looking for an article, didn't
find it, and wanted to get it started so that hopefully others would add
more detail. Why should I care about Wikipedia's gross article count?

Assume good faith, please.

> WP has a high enough count and popularity.  Why not start
> actually focusing on content detail and enforcing the long
> standing yet rarely applied policies?

[[Wikipedia:Reliable sources]] is not policy.

> The alternative seems to be to continue to be the rear end
> of jokes about knowledge by consensus and hearsay like that
> on the 1/24 Colbert Report until WP loses what trust it
> has.

That's a false dilemma. While it's true that there are plenty of jokes
out there about it, there's also a lot of respect and admiration as
well. I don't see any big risk in continuing as we have been.