[WikiEN-l] Unreliable sources, or no sources at all?

[John Lee]

On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 3:32 PM, bobolozo <bobolozo at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Much of the text of Wikipedia is unsourced currently.
>  In addition, due perhaps to lack of understanding of
>  our policies, or just the desire to add sources, we
>  have tens of thousands(at least) of unreliable sources
>  listed as references.  By doing a Special
>  pages/External links search, it's not hard to find
>  large numbers of these.  A search on *.tripod.com, for
>  example, gives 10,000+ links, many of which are being
>  used as references. africanelections.tripod.com alone
>  is linked to
>  484 articles, and is being presented as a source in
>  multiple templates.
>
>  My question is, is it a good idea to simply go through
>  and remove large numbers of these?  Are we better off
>  with no sources at all for portions of text, rather
>  than have references which consist of message board
>  postings and personal websites and such?
>
>  I noticed people using urbandictionary entries as
>  references, and went through and removed all I could
>  find, from about 100 articles (I left any links in
>  External links sections, as having a link there is
>  entirely different from having it listed as a
>  reference).  But now, having discovered the ease with
>  which I can find thousands more unreliable sources as
>  references, I'm wondering what others think of the
>  mass removal of unreliable sources.
>
>  Am I correct in believing that we're better off having
>  an unsourced paragraph of text, rather than a
>  paragraph which has as a reference
>  somedudeswebpage.tripod.com?
>
>  (And, yes, I know, it would be optimal to replace
>  unreliable sources with reliable ones.  But this would
>  take about 100 times as long)

It is better to have a source than no source at all. If you must do
this (I would not advise it), I strongly recommend you place the links
on the talk page. But there is no real point anyway; references exist
so our readers will know where we got our facts from. As Andrew says,
if this was not a Tripod site, it would probably be ignored as an ok
source. These refs should stay until we can find better ones.

Johnleemk