Wikipedia talk:Speedy deletion criterion for unsourced articles

What about stubs?

Putting a stub tag on an article is a clear indication of "we'll get to this later". Seems a bit harsh to stomp on people's good faith efforts to prioritize their time.

I'm in favor of moving removed articles over to user space. I am not persuaded that disk resources are relevant. With only 6 million articles in all Wikipedias, most of which are probably less than a thousand words, use some basic data compression (e.g. zip) and you could probably fit the whole darn thing onto a DVD-ROM (granting metadata is an issue, but even so).

Disk resources are irrelevant to the discussion anyway-the fact that articles and history can be undeleted mean they stay on the server somewhere, taking up just as much space as they ever did. "Deletion" really just means that the page and history is no longer viewable by non-admins. I'd be fine with removal to user space, provided that these were eventually cleaned up if they never got worked on. Alternatively, it has been suggested that a "Draft:" namespace be created, in which articles that were not yet ready for placement in mainspace could be created and worked on, and moved to mainspace once done and sourced. If this would be something the developers were willing to do (which of course they would not absent strong consensus for the use of it), I think this proposal has a great deal of merit-articles placed in a separate namespace are much less likely to be forgotten than articles in userspace. Alternatively, we could create an "Article drafts moved to userspace" category, assigned by a template that would be placed on the userfied article, so that anyone interested in working on a draft can find it, not just its author. The big thing is to get unsourced stuff out of mainspace, and to make clear that WP:V and WP:RS are not just nice ideas that can be gotten to sometime-they're requirements every bit as critical as WP:NPOV and WP:NOT, and just like those two, apply equally to a just-created stub or a featured article.

As to "getting to it later"-a critical part of the point here is to get across that if you have no source to cite, don't click that "create this page" link! Someone may be acting in good faith creating a vanity bio or spamvertisement, and think that's acceptable here, but that doesn't mean they get to keep it! The same should be true of failing to source-we should gently correct people, but we should bother to do the correcting. Seraphimblade 06:16, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree about doing it gently. I try to teach one person a week. How many would we need to implement this properly? We would need a few thousand participants. And quite a number of good contributors here have made it very plain they don't want to be taught, and are here because it is not a school. So I also upgrade one article a week or so when there's really a deserving topic. Unless we are seriously prepared to do this for all the new and old editors who need it, we should not be making requirements that will not be properly met. We would probably need a cadre of about 500 to 1000 people, all of them expert at doing this at least is a certain range of subjects. DGG 05:54, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Should {{stub}} include phrasing which mentions providing sources? The current phasing mentions a good article; is sourcing critical enough to be explicitly mentioned in the general stub template? Yes, I know there are many stub templates. (SEWilco 00:16, 22 February 2007 (UTC))

HipHopDX.com

does this article fit the bill - HipHopDX.com? JoeSmack ^Talk 23:26, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

That one nearly (but not quite) fits this bill. Bare assertion of highly questionable notability + no secondary sources cited + puff = prod. Seraphimblade 08:09, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Totally, all absurd

Take your Britannica, in book, if you have. I have 1993 edition. Do all articles cite their sources or references? No, they don't. So, why are you asking that with such crudeness for Wikipedia? Are you truly going to delete ALL 300,000 articles having no references provided? If you will, you'll lose also me, one who has so far produced at least 1,000 valuable articles: admittingly, not always providing source, sometimes because I forgot, sometimes because I knew the matter by myself and was too lazy to add the books I drew it, other times 'cause I translated from other Wikipedias. I think that there's a level under which we should admit that references can miss: I agree a good article should cite it, but there's no reason why we should deleted useful stuff and ruin the volunteer work of so many people who didn't cite their sources for reasons like mine, or others. Bye. (PS: I think the ones who wrote this article were not so much into the true spirit of Wikipedia, despite what they think... at least, in what I so far seemed it was that spirit). --Attilios 14:58, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Britannica articles end with a citation to whoever wrote them, who is generally a credible expert. We can't rest on our reputations at wikipedia, so we need to use sources. If you're willing to put in the effort to write the article, why not put in the bit extra to dig up the book and cite it, so we know it's right? Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:20, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Do not trust that authorship indication too far. In modern EBs, the material has been extensively edited and revised by their staff. (In the 1913 the articles were often written by people working way outside their true field). The only thing I personally would use it for is the Further reading lists, or as a final check that I haven't omitted something. I personally would not start an article in a field where I'd have to depend on the EB. DGG 23:22, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

The Britannica argument, as stated here and on Talk:No reliable sources, no verifiability, no article has won me over completely. CSDfUA no longer seems like such a harsh solution.Mostlyharmless 06:38, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Inactive?

There hasn't been any discussion here for 12 days, and I think consensus still hasn't been reached. Do people agree that this 'hasn't reached consensus and is unlikely to do so', and if so, should it be marked {{rejected}}? --ais523 18:46, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, we should continue, because I think it indicate that a break was needed. many of this discussions revive after a few weeks--and usually that;'s a good thing, because the level is usually more thoughtful and less defensive.

However, there did seem to be consensus on one thing at least--that the procedure would not much resemble the current one-hour-or-less speedy, since people need time to find the sources. So we need a better name. DGG 19:17, 16 February 2007 (UTC).

Good God, yes. I think a lot of the reaction has been a knee-jerk "OMG we can't speedy things just for lack of sources!" without actually reading the proposals. How about "proposed deletion process for unsourced articles?" If this works similarly to anything, it's WP:PROD, so why not have the name identify with that? Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 19:21, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

You are correct that the proposal evolved a lot away from the original proposal (and pagename) but I don't think that a rename would help at this point. Even the reworked proposals were not collecting the consensus they needed. (I don't agree that the remaining opposition was all knee-jerk reaction to the name. There were still unresolved concerns about the impact those approaches would have on the culture of the project.)
Tag this page {{rejected}} but if someone wants to use this as the basis for a new proposal, be bold. That's why we keep rejected proposals around - so we can learn from them. Just do it on a new page so the proposal gets a fresh start. Rossami (talk) 19:38, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I think you might have the right idea there. I've started up a new proposal at WP:PRODUS, please feel free to comment. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me Please review me!} 21:44, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

This whole sourcing obssession is wrong

I find a majority of the Wikipedia pages I reach when looking for information now bear the template saying they're being challenged based on lack of sources. If those articles were to be deleted, Wikipedia would go from one of my first-choice information sources to one of the least useful ones on the web.

The requirement for "outside sources" discourages experts from editing articles, and thus reduces article quality. Describing recording expert opinion as "original research" is absurd, and makes you a laughing-stock.

I've seen multiple instances of people with no knowledge of the topic area challenge valid edits made by experts on this basis; it appears to be the favored tool of people trying to expunge knowledge from Wikipedia.

Dd-b 16:07, 7 June 2007 (UTC)