[WikiEN-l] Edit Wikipedia Week is coming. How not to bite the n00bs?

[Philip Sandifer]

On Nov 7, 2007, at 12:31 AM, Delirium wrote:

>> Hmm, that's a good point. IMO we should emphasize to newcomers that  
>> the
> things they really need to know up front in order to contribute are:  
> 1)
> write neutral content; and 2) cite reliable sources so that what you
> write can be verified by someone else.

We need to be careful here - [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]] are important  
pages (and the latter is finally well-written! Or, at least, not  
horribly wrong), but citing sources is not a primary policy so much as  
one we have trouble getting the level of compliance with that we want.

The truth of the matter is that we don't want every statement in every  
article sourced. This is not a standard we put up for any article. The  
actual standard is much closer to "we want any statement that anybody  
has ever raised an eyebrow about to be sourced, and we want our  
articles to point readers to places where they can learn more and get  
more reliable sources than us."

This is a very vital distinction, because the former - cite everything  
- is a standard that most contributors, and especially idle "Hey, I  
found a mistake" contributors cannot possibly meet. It is further a  
standard that destructively pushes online sources - because if a  
contributor really only wants to spend 5 minutes on the edit they  
don't have the ability to look anywhere Google doesn't send them.

We must remember the difference between "unsourced material may be  
removed" and "unsourced material should not be added." There's a very  
big difference, and the {{fact}} tag exists as a way of navigating  
that gulf.

It is more accurate to say that sourcing, like wikifying, copyediting,  
and other such things, is a step that articles should go through as  
they advance towards the good and featured levels. It is an important  
step. We need more people who are willing to work with sources. But  
sourcing is not a basic concern, except inasmuch as people need to be  
*ready* to provide sources.

The better standard to push after NPOV is verifiability, with a  
reminder that sometimes, if people are skeptical of information, they  
will be expected to actually verify their information.

-Phil