this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2024
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Inexplicably unpopular opinion: the priority for Wikipedia is not to delete whole articles, it's to delete unsubstantiated content within articles.
Personally I would be in favor of a bot that, after expiry of a time limit, deletes everything in an article - everything - where no citation has been provided. The resulting encyclopedia would be smaller but more accurate by definition, and almost certainly more useful.
I just cannot understand why it's so widely considered acceptable that articles contain unsourced factoids for years, even decades, on end.
I think there’s an as big problem in that the citation provided often does not back the sentence claim’s, but since people rarely check the sources it gets included.
This is a big problem in actual research too
As a college student, I have certainly never cited a completely irrelevant source with a similar-enough sounding title at 11:55pm for a paper due at midnight to get my source count up to meet a rubric... I would never. I resent the accusation.