Wikipedia talk:Long-term Unsourced Articles

message: Please, if you do not think this proposal is a good idea, please explian what problems it has and how you think it could be improved instead of shooting it down without explaining why. Paul Cyr 21:53, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

message: I like the idea, but I think this may be giving people the wrong idea. Why not spend the time you would be trying to delete an article by sourcing it? If an article is notable, but not sourced, we shouldn't get rid of the content that may be good for future source-finders. I just think that this is too "deletionist" of a policy suggestion. └Jared┘┌talk┐  02:11, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'll clarify by saying that if an article is borderline notable, and it is lacking sources, this may be a good way to expedite the deletion. I just think that it should be ensured that notable articles don't get included in this too, even if they are unsourced. └Jared┘┌talk┐  02:13, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

text: You do realize those are essays created by only a handful of users right? Paul Cyr 07:41, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wrong message? 

message: First of all, WP:ATT is no longer policy, WP:V is what we are using now. Second, this will delete more good articles than bad. According to Category tracker, there are 68,954 pages in :Category:All articles lacking sources, that's 4% of all the pages on Wikipedia. I also have a problem with "hundreds of articles exist that have not been edited more than a few times or in many months; these articles have fallen through the cracks." This suggests that the proposal is targeting low-visibility pages. We should be targeting the high-visibility pages, that are edited often and still are unsourced, these are the true problems with sourcing on Wikipedia and these might actually get sources as people will see the message. The articles "that have not been edited more than a few times" should be targeted for cleanup, not a mass deletion. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 02:29, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Don't like this

message: I think this proposal will delete something like 90% of the wiki-database. (folks just haven't gotten round to putting unsourced tags everywhere, there are >1M pages, after all). Marked as rejected for now. It might be interesting to do statistics (maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised and only 80% would end up deleted).
Note that unsourced material need only be removed if challenged. There may well be a consensus among experts on a page.
--Kim Bruning 03:13, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: So is Wikipedia accuracy a trust thing now? Paul Cyr 03:16, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm not sure what you mean. At any rate, this proposal isn't really a practical way to go about things. (It certainly is possible to raise accuracy though. My own favorite approach is m:eventualism .) --Kim Bruning 03:27, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rejected 

message: This is the same thing as PROD, except that nobody is allowed to dispute it, which is silly. Why do we need a new process to do this? -Amarkov moo! 04:00, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Is PROD a valid way to deleted unsourced articles? I wasn't aware.  And people can dispute this, they have 3 months (if thats the agreed length) to add a reference. Paul Cyr 05:19, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Prod can be used for anything. If you prod an article with the reason "t RH j0jGB %Jjjjy '53jy 4", and nobody disputes that reason, it can be deleted. If it's disputed at all, even because "i dunt wanna find sources", you do have to go through AfD, but I don't think the extra time spent there is worth a new process. -Amarkov moo! 21:01, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pointless 

message: I also want to mention this proposal is not set in stone.  I am open to any suggestions on a better way to handle this issue.  We just need some way to either get articles referenced or get rid of them. Paul Cyr 05:22, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I am sure that in fact we definitely do not want that. (Or maybe it's just because I happen to have an eventualist point of view, and really am strongly opposed to such extreme immediatism ;-) --Kim Bruning 13:11, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not set in stone 

message: Anyone considering this proposal should look at User:Carnildo/The 100, in particular, the proportion of articles that are unsourced, and the trends in article sourcing over time. --Carnildo 08:39, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statistics to ponder 

message: As the proposal itself says, "the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is whether material is attributable to a reliable published source". Note that is says "attributable" and not "attributed". This means that it has to be possible to attribute it to a reliable source, not "already attributed". Many, many articles are notable, correct, and attributable in principle, but are not already attributed to any sources. Deleting them is a completely unnecessary destruction of useful information and of the effort of countless contributors. --Itub 15:24, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Terrible idea 

message: ...as an essential rehash of Wikipedia:Speedy deletion criterion for unsourced articles, which was soundly rejected not too long ago. --badlydrawnjeff talk 20:08, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Without wishing to trawl through the above mentioned proposal (it is a very big discussion, Gentle Reader) I would ask you, as you presumably took part there, is there any part of the current proposal that is new or significantly different? LessHeard vanU 21:35, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Small details.  Nothing significant enough to make this drastically different. --badlydrawnjeff talk 22:08, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reject this... 

message: I wrote at the village pump;This is confusing notability with popularity. Articles do not get to FA because they are more notable than others, but because editors are willing to devote the time and effort. Conversely, an item is not non-notable because a tag hasn't been acted upon within a certain time period. Should a hypothetical article on the 14th Century Economics of Scandanavia be put up for deletion just because we have no editors that can read Mediaeval Swedish (or any that care to read Swedish treatises on 14th Century Economics)?without knowing that the proposed policy was suggesting speedy deletion of said articles. As I wouldn't support the proposed policy if it suggested articles went to AfD, where there was a chance that the worthiness of the subject would be recognised and the sources found, then I cannot support the policy as written specifically or generally. LessHeard vanU 21:01, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Poor grounds and worse solution 

message: This policy is redundant, really. If there an article has been hanging around for a long time with absolutely no sources, use proposed deletion. If someone subsequently removed the prod notice, at least you know it's on somebody's watchlist. --Tony Sidaway 11:51, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Redundant