[WikiEN-l] Removing unsourced information

[Charles Matthews]

Gwern Branwen wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 3:42 PM, Charles Matthews
> <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>   
>> quiddity wrote:
>>     
>>> What to do about someone who has "lost the plot"?
>>> For example, this editor seems to be going from article to article,
>>> deleting every prose paragraph that doesn't have a ref tag (usually
>>> everything except the intro sentence).
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&offset=20100125214401&target=JBsupreme
>>> Some of the content being removed is obviously not good (selfpromoting
>>> peacockery etc), but much is perfectly fine, and this seems to be one
>>> of the worst (most indiscriminate) ways to handle the hypothetical
>>> problem.
>>>
>>>       
>> Suggest that one can drive-by even faster in adding {{fact}}? I think
>> this is the first step, the suggestion that identifying unsourced facts
>> is a way of achieving a similar end, and that we can all applaud it when
>> properly done.
>>
>> Charles
>>     
>
> And where does the {{fact}}-bombing end?
>
> [[Medici bank]] is as finely referenced an article as I have ever (or
> likely will ever) written with 96 footnotes, multiple books & papers
> consulted, and extensive quoting - yet the overwhelming majority of
> sentences lack <ref> tags and are presumably candidates for bombing.
>
>   
Well, I think that in a well-written, well-sourced article people should 
be still allowed to ask for further references. I foolishly copied the 
basics of [[List of dissenting academies]] out of a book, thinking it 
was a cheap article; and so far have added about 120 footnotes and 
created around 50 articles at Wikisource to support it. Just shows where 
these things can lead.

I actually had big problems with inline referencing style when it was a 
hot potato, and I did start putting articles together sentence by 
sentence. There were reassurances that it was not going to lead to 
"lame" writing, and I think those were overdone (more precisely, in an 
area where there is plenty of academic research at book length, you will 
probably by OK, but that's quite a limitation). OTOH inline referenced 
writing is now the house style, and actually there are worse things: 
concision is good, and fact-checked encyclopedia articles are good, and 
the fact that articles are never finished is a given.

Charles