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It's time for a purge of unsourced claims
Unsourced claims are a pox on Wikipedia that should be tolerated no longer.
| “ | In the overwhelming majority of cases, adding unsourced information on Wikipedia amounts to nothing more than digital graffitis. | ” |
| — Veverve, this essay | ||
| “ | I can NOT emphasize this enough.
There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative "I heard it somewhere" pseudo information is to be tagged with a "needs a cite" tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. |
” |
| — Jimmy Wales, here. | ||
Why should we remove unsourced claims, and why with such vigour?
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Unsourced claims do not seem immediately threatening. They may or may not be true, but no-one expects Wikipedia to be perfect, right? Better to slap a {{cn}} or {{verification}} on it and come back in a few months, right?
Wrong. In my view, every unsourced statement is an immediate problem, requiring either a source or instant removal. Can't be bothered to search around for a source? Then remove the claim.
Uncited statements are the plague of Wikipedia, directly reducing the reliability of the project. Best to annihilate them once and for all.
See, while finding a source for a claim is obviously better than deleting it outright, deleting it is preferable to letting it be. Uncited claims are a pox on Wikipedia that must be eradicated. The reason for keeping them is the very same as the reason for deleting them: they may or may not be true. This uncertainty makes them worthless, as even potentially untrue statements contribute nothing to an encyclopedia. The very fact that they are unsourced "greys them out", as I wrote in this essay.
How should we go about such a purge?
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Unsourced claims and blocks
editIt is my firm belief that users introducing uncited claims to the encyclopedia can and should be blocked (after due warning, obviously). Consider the following points:
Uncited claims directly lower the potential reliability of the project.- Uncited claims go directly against the core content policy of verifiability.
- Vandalism is defined as
deliberate attempt to damage Wikipedia
. - If the uncited claims are inserted maliciously, then the behaviour constitutes vandalism.
- If the uncited claims are inserted in good faith, but the user will not stop, after due warning, then the user should be blocked to prevent further disruption to the encyclopaedia.
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