 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
 | This page in a nutshell: All sourced articles must contain accurate and well-written reference citations. |
Definitions
editTRUTH – a user’s adherence to a specific ideological belief structure(s) that may or may not be supported by any substantive or credible evidence.
truth – the existence of all phenomena and events within reality irrespective of human perception.
accuracy – the proximity between actual phenomena/events (i.e. truth) and how they are presented.
Basic arguments
editReliable-Verifiable Sources + Inaccurate Reference Citations = Loss of Credibility
Reliable-Verifiable Sources + Accurate Reference Citations = Quality Articles
Policy suggestion
editWP:Accurate reference citations
Implementation
editAll reference citations present on any given article must be checked for accuracy according to the following criteria:
- Are the reference citations directly reflective of the statements they are associated with?
- Are there reference citations that possess incorrect page numbers?
- Do sources present within any reference citation follow MLA standards?
- Do the reference citations have direct quotes?
- Do the reference citations with extant quotes possess accurate data?
- Are the reference citations placed at the end of an article sentence’s punctuation mark?
- Are all direct quotes accurately extracted from reliable and verifiable sources?
- Are all direct quotes limited to the statement(s) they directly reference to?
Reasoning
editThis suggested policy is different from WP:RS in that it emphasizes the importance of maintaining quality reference citations. Wikipedia cannot increase its overall level of credibility without focusing on how verifiable and reliable sources are being presented within reference citations in all articles that do not have either FA, GA, or DYK status.
Benefits
editThere are a myriad of benefits that can be attributed to the implementation of this policy.
- Increases a constructive user’s awareness on how and where to implement reference citations extracted from verifiable and reliable sources.
- Decreases a constructive user’s inclination towards accidentally or haphazardly providing misquotes, misinterpretations of empirical data, erroneous page numbers, and inaccurate/incomplete source descriptions.
- Increases article quality, which will facilitate acceptance to either FA, GA, and/or DYK status.
- Decreases a constructive user’s inclination towards creating unsourced stub articles.
- Decreases the amount of time-consuming arguments over unsourced components of an article.