[cldr]

I was thinking about this the other day and I came to think that Wikipedia's rule about citations is this: Wikipedia does not want to be a source of information. It wants to be a collection/aggregation of other sources of information, and those other sources have to be accessible to others for all time (i.e. not a human being but a book written by a human being).

What I mean to say is that Wikipedia's system is one that does not/will not give article editors credit for original content; it treats them as just collectors and explainers of original content. When the explainers start writing stuff that has no source, they then disappear and leave Wikipedia holding the content which is now unverifiable. And that's just not how Jimmy wanted it to work I guess.

When I look at it that way, the policy doesn't seem that ridiculous. It may be inconvenient, but that's like saying a stack data structure is inconvenient because you can't remove things from the bottom. It's just the way it is; it has advantages and disadvantages.

[hyperpape]

I agree that Wikipedia's goal is to be the collection of things that we know that we know. So we do need citations. But when an article is wrong and doesn't already have thorough citations for every claim, should we demand citations for every new contribution?

My point is really about process: when someone comes to us with a bit of knowledge, but no citations and limited understanding of the Wikipedia process, how do we react?

The model whereanyone can edit and see their changes live has real benefits and costs. It makes it easy to make your first contribution, but it also means that if an editor doesn't like it, they just revert it. Sometimes, maybe changes should go in a queue or something.

I come to Wikipedia, and dump a ton of graph theory on some page. An editor says "look, this isn't quite how it works, but it looks like you're trying to improve the page. Is this stuff you have citations for? Do you know what textbooks would cover it?"

Maybe my edits don't go live immediately, but it's better than the current situation, where they just get reverted by some guy spouting WP:STQ!

(That's the grain of truth the comment down below that Wikipedia needs to be more like git).

[DanBC]

> But when an article is wrong and doesn't already have thorough citations for every claim, should we demand citations for every new contribution?

Ideally, you'd go through the article. You'd remove anything that is "wrong"[1], and find citations for everything else. Then, when someone wants to add anything, you can find a cite for it, or ask them to find a cite for it, and remove it if there is no cite.

This demonstrates why WP can be horrible - anyone doing this to any article would soon find themselves skewered in horrible WP processes. Good cites are mocked as POV pushing, hopeless cites are forced in by people with more time than you.

> I come to Wikipedia, and dump a ton of graph theory on some page. An editor says "look, this isn't quite how it works, but it looks like you're trying to improve the page. Is this stuff you have citations for? Do you know what textbooks would cover it?

Sometimes that's how it works. There are people on WP who are great at helping that style of new editor; finding them mentors or whatnot to help them with the process. it's hit and miss, sometimes it fails badly.

> where they just get reverted by some guy spouting WP:STQ!

WP has made some effort to prevent the over active 14 year old using tools to auto-revert hundreds (thousands) of edits per day.

[jberryman]

i.e. wikipedia is an encyclopedia.

[fluxon]

Agreed, and well said.