[WikiEN-l] Elimination of unreferenced articles drive?

[Steve Summit]

Ec wrote:
> Perhaps those who advocate sourcing of 100,000 articles in five days 
> should themselves spend five days sourcing articles.  Then we could ask 
> them, "How many articles were you able to source in those five day?"  I 
> absolutely support the principle that the ultimate responsibility for 
> sourcing material lies with the person who contributed it, but that does 
> not mean that others have no responsibility at all.

Also, it's worth remembering that the {unsourced} template has
two complimentary functions.  It does *not* solely mean, "The
slacker of an editor who wrote this article had better get off
his butt and find some references, pronto, before we delete it."
An equally important message is to the *reader* of the article:
"We're sorry, this article does not yet meet our standards of
verifiability.  Please take it with an extra grain of salt,
until such time as we're able to reference it properly."

This second interpretation can hold indefinitely, and the same is
obviously true for the {fact} tag.  Neither tag need be taken as
an ultimatum that the sentence or article must *ipso facto* be
deleted unless a reference is speedily found.