Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Removal of Unsourced Material

Other reasons to wait
I included a couple of other reasons to wait, which Dreftymac (quite reasonably) commented out. So I guess we should discuss those, and any others people think might be worth including and talking about. We need to work out what to include, and how to talk about it.

The ones I put in were:


 * Material That May Well Be True
 * Whole Articles

Can we discuss these indented from this point, and start any new ideas unindented below, please. SamBC 15:55, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Nearly 15 years on, I'm revisiting this... I would say that "whole articles" is covered by "would make it eligible for speedy deletion", possibly with a modification to the preamble (or indeed addition of a preamble) making clear that the essay refers to the removal of content, not articles/pages.

I'm trying to reconstruct what I meant by "material that may well be true". I think ultimately what I meant by that is "material that, in your judgement, has a fair chance of being correct and verifiable, but you can't be bothered to find a source - even if no-one else has been bothered to either; if you can be bothered to remove it, you should be prepared to put in a little effort to find a source".

I'd welcome opinions on both points, and any other reasons to wait anyone can think of. SamBC(talk) 17:54, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

suggested content
During 2005 and 2006 citing sources went from being rare to being common. Where material dates from before 2007, it is preferable to find sources for the claims. One way to enlist help for this is to tag the material with rather than remove it. If sufficient effort has been put into finding a source and none has been found then it is not only appropriate but desirable to remove the offending material. The amount of effort appropriate depends on the nature and size of the material to be removed. An unsourced claim about a living person that you are sure is false should usually be deleted immediately. A recently added minor unsourced claim about a dead person that you find unlikely should usually be tagged with and deleted after perhaps a month or so. A minor unsourced claim about a dead person that was added many months ago should be at least googled about by someone in an effort to source the claim. Any important claim deletion or large quantity deletion should be preceded by significant efforts to not only find a source but also to enlist help in finding a source. Under no circumstances is it appropriate to delete long established content that you do not understand such as you might find in a math or science article. WAS 4.250 17:36, 19 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm very confident that it's best to keep matters of timing to a separate section. In fact, while there's lots of good content there, different bits of it belong to different sections in the current organisation, which I've been sticking with following encouraging comments at WT:V. If you think that there's elements of that your text that are not currently covered in the essay text (I'm pretty sure that there are), try to figure out which section they belong in and work them in there. SamBC 18:39, 19 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm better at sourcing and logic than composition. I'm sure you'll do a fine job at extracting the ideas. WAS 4.250 19:59, 19 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Okedoke, I'll do my best; wanted to give you the chance to do so if you wanted to. SamBC 20:00, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Title of the essay
It's just occurred to me that the title of the essay is, being pedantic, incorrect; we're talking about unsourced material, not uncited material. Uncited material would be material that wasn't referred to anywhere else, and that's a completely different kettle of fish. If someone wants to fix that and fix the links leading here, that would probably be good. SamBC 19:12, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I fixed it. SamBC(talk) 18:49, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

"How long to wait" guidance
I've commented out the essentially empty "How Long To Wait" subjection, on the basis that there's nothing useful in it, and it may or may not be appropriate for there to be anything.

If anyone has ideas about giving people some algorithmic or heuristic idea about how long to wait, then please discuss them here. SamBC(talk) 13:49, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Links for "discussion on the talk page didn't help"
There's a subsection for when discussion didn't help that says there are other avenues for discussion - there should be examples with links. If anyone wants to suggest some for discussion here, or just straight up add ones they have thought of, please feel free. SamBC(talk) 13:54, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Active again
Well, it seems that I might be becoming active again, having logged in primarily to fix a fairly heinous misrepresentation on Protocol I… I may look at this essay some more. Putting on notice here so people who have this watchlisted can comment before I set to it too much. I'll put ideas in other sections of this page before editing the essay, as apparently people have been referring to this, albeit not that much. SamBC(talk) 14:16, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

I'm also very aware of WP:OWN, so not expecting people to run things by me or defer to me just because I started the essay. SamBC(talk) 17:55, 19 April 2022 (UTC)