[WikiEN-l] User space needs to be more clearly marked

[John Lee]

On 3/20/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I can recall on several occasions starting a quick stub article on
> > something based off of general information I already knew and then later
> > on came back with more detailed information and sources after I'd
> > researched a little. I guess I've just been lucky so far that CSD
> > fundamentalists haven't caught me at it.
>
> What's the point of that? It would be better to wait until you've
> found the sources before you start writing, otherwise you may be
> adding incorrect information.
>
> Citing sources should be easy because they should be the actual source
> of the information, which you will already know since it's whatever
> you just finished reading.


This strikes me as a rather inconvenient process. Perhaps other people work
at things differently, but I rarely directly refer to sources when starting
an article unless I know little about it. The only exception is when I have
sources and am not sure what articles could use them, in which case I hunt
through the book/whatever for things I could write about. Otherwise, when I
want to write about something in general (especially when it's on impulse,
normally after "what? this is a redlink?"), it's often inefficient and
frustrating to hunt down a source.

Call me an eventualist, but from experience, things work out fine in the
end. The article doesn't stay like that forever - it improves.

(Disclaimer: I don't exactly start articles very often these days without
sources, mainly because it's all but impossible for me to find a redlink
where I have the requisite general information for a stub stuffed in my
head, so my "experience" is actually a couple of years old. If this is an
instance of old fartery, feel free to disregard this email.)

Johnleemk