[WikiEN-l] Elimination of unreferenced articles drive?

[Chris Lüer]

At 03:47 AM 6/19/2007, David Goodman wrote:
>About 25% of the WP articles cannot be properly sourced without access
>to one of the about 250 existing research libraries (in the
>english-speaking world), and perhaps  a third of those can be done in
>only one of the top half of those, the ones with high quality pint
>collections.  Most WPedians clearly do not have such access, and most
>of those who do are clearly unaccustomed to using it for such
>purposes. Those who can do this, are not likely to assume the burden
>of sourcing a few hundred thosand articles in 5 days.
>And it is not just finding sources. It is necessary to find multiple
>sources in a thorough way, and see what part of the article can be
>supported, and then do the secondary research necessary to rewrite the
>article. How many WP editors know how to do this properly? How many of
>the enthusiasts working on popular culture actually know how to do an
>adequate job filling the gaps there?

Right, but I would argue access and skill are not the issue... we 
have plenty of editors near libraries, and most of them are pretty 
smart folks, too. The issue is simply that it's a huge amount of 
work. Writing a good, medium-length article takes a couple of days 
maybe if you are familiar with the topic. Looking up all the 
references in a library is going to take weeks.

         Chris