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

[Ray Saintonge]

Matthew Brown wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 23, 2008 at 2:23 PM, bobolozo <bobolozo at yahoo.com> wrote:
>   
>>  As far as I can tell, this statement that one should
>>  never remove a source without replacing it or removing
>>  the text it supports, this is not contained in any of
>>  our policies or guidelines.
>>     
> Perhaps it isn't, perhaps it is.  It is, however, the /spirit/ of what
> we should be doing on Wikipedia.  Policy and guideline pages are
> constantly modified by people with vested interests in having them say
> things that support their positions; I would not trust them.
>
> Removing sources is contrary to the spirit of the encyclopedia and the
> point of our sourcing policies.  Obviously you can contrive a
> situation when one would do it; however, no Wikipedia policy is set in
> stone, deliberately.
>
> Having information in Wikipedia that is wholly lacking in sources is
> poorer information to information that is properly sourced to a
> second-rate source.  That information has provenance.  You can go and
> look up the source.  You can try to find out where that source in turn
> got its information.
This all assumes that the "source" says what it is claimed to have 
said.  No source at all is preferable to sources that support specious 
original research.  Strung together these sources, which may each 
individually be valid, can support a "Da Vinci Code" style of 
reasoning.  Properly sourced from second-rate sources is still better 
than poorly sourced from first-rate sources.

I agree that policy churning has resulted in policies that cannot 
themselves be viewed as reliable sources for anybody's actions. Some 
have said before that other Wikipedia articles should not be acceptable 
as reliable sources; that approach could as easily be applied to policy 
pages.

Ec