User:The Founders Intent/Thoughts on Citations

THOUGHTS ON CITATIONS

This short essay expresses my thoughts on the problems I see with the requirements for citations or references in certain types of articles.

As I have edited many articles since joining WP, I have noticed the difficulty in finding references for certain types of articles (e.g., places). These article just don't really lend themselves to referencing and therefore seems to fall outside the norm of standard editing rules. You can find hundreds of these articles under, that continue to build up and go uncorrected every year. When you comb the Internet for a souce, you can literally spend hours to no avail. I have attempted to discuss this issue on related Talk Pages, but everyone seems to find an excuse for supporting the status quo. It's frustrating that the rules of common sense cannot prevail within the large burocracy inside WP. I feel like a man in an echo chamber talking to himself, as though other people are impervious to the correctness of my arguments. It would be easy to give up, and move on; but these lists of unreferenced articles continue to build up unabated. The supposed control mechanism, which should stop the creation of an article without including a reference appears dysfunctional. My pleadings go unanswered in this impersonal world at WP. Instead of questioning the rule, the rule is defended. What happened to "breaking the rules" being the mantra, rather than protect the burocracy? Even this article is cannot hide for the secret citation police. See the hidden category, Articles lacking citations.

POSSIBLY MORE TO COME...