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WP:BURDEN is its own pillar of site policy. If it were not there as written, constructive collaboration on Wikipedia as we know it would not be possible. Its text is appropriately exceedingly blunt about what is disallowed, and harbors no room for confusion.
Even so, I argue there exists a narrow body of cases where removals of uncited content should not be understood to fall under WP:BURDEN's protection. If there is a clear responsibility to provide citations, there is also a clear responsibility to demonstrate discernment in the application of policy. All of the following criteria must apply to a removal:
- The removing editor habitually removes uncited content from articles without any accompanying discussion of its substance or the likelihood of its verifiability.
- It must be plausible that the removal could be done without any reading, by merely skimming and selecting passages and paragraphs that lack citations at their end.
- It is all but certain that the content is straightforwardly verifiable.
- The content is not marginal to the article topic, and its absence results in a worse experience for the reader. Equivalently, its absence makes future improvements of the article less likely, by hiding potential fodder for other editors to improve and properly cite.
- The content was not recently added by an editor who might be able to address their own uncited additions.
- The article is not a GA, FA, BLP, or under any other considerations where the presence of any uncited material is particularly problematic.
Removals meeting all of the above criteria do not improve the encyclopedia; they are only capable of making it worse for both readers and editors. If such behavior was desirable, then bots would be deployed to automate it, and the {{citation needed}} tag would serve little purpose. Potential reversions of these removals should come with an explanation of how it is possible to constructively override what WP:BURDEN unambiguously says.