Verifiability Hi Flexme You said SingKong this issue of quoting sources giving reliablilty of information it seems sensible at first yet it is wildly out of control check out the comment on the updraft page where it is said to be an expensive way to produce windpower it might be expensive but this is NOT the way to show it this is simply a website quoting the media who quote someone s offhand comment possibly out of context this is not reliable Or another the floating chimney as jdh saw it was totally misguided though it may start a similar but sensible design in sci fi novels Similarly if i was to publish my results of my analysis that is at present on my talk page and in the tower discussion page on ANY other website even on my own yahoo freesite then my results would suddenly become verifiable this is out of control i read wikipedia a lot and find it a wonderful source of info i had no idea about this shambles behind the scenes when i first started editting i assumed that wikipedia itself was a nice central location to bring my ideas so they could be verified in some sense but it seems that if you feel you know something then in fact you are best off going ANYWHERE other than wikipedia bizzarre Flexme I understand the frustration I had a similar reaction But keep in mind this is an encyclopedia written by many people and it s the concept and practice of verifiability that stops it becoming a shambles This can be quite frustrating for someone who knows their material without necessarily having sources at their fingertips however I do believe it s essential I met a guy in Nimbin a few months ago who complained that he d edited Wikipedia 4 times and had been reverted each time He was putting in his own ideas but he was in a very different category to you This guy appeared to be mentally ill and believed in all sorts of bizarre conspiracy theories Now if there is no test of verifiability it can make things impossible for other editors as it may not be obvious from looking at the article and history page which editor is a genius which one has a PhD in solar power generation and which one has been getting their ideas from conspiracy rags and voices in their head Not to be harsh to the mentally ill but you see that it s a problem To demand a level of expertise of editors would be to drastically restrict the effectiveness of Wikipedia and cause endless arguments about who is best qualified Using the principle of verifiability however makes it much easier to maintain reliable articles I should add verifiability doesn t mean you must have a source before adding something However it must be something that can be verified and it is hoped a source will be added later at least I sometimes even put a tag citation needed after material that I ve written myself If one person publishes an analysis on their website that s not necessarily notable but if editors judge it to be useful and suitable they could include it As odd as this seems at first it s better than putting one s ideas directly into Wikipedia as the source is now very clear to any reader and is open to checking and comparison with other views Also being on an external site the Wikipedia article doesn t automatically have to endorse that view but can present it as one viewpoint if that is appropriate I suppose one of the keys is that Wikipedia is not trying to be the reservoir of all human knowledge though it may come closer than anything else to fulfilling that purpose through extensive linking to other sites and sources I ve gone on much longer than I planned Hope that makes sense feel free to comment or ask further on my page or on a relevant talk page e g at the Wikipedia Community Portal tc