User talk:Brian/Modest proposal

Modest Proposal

Anyone should feel free to contribute or give me your thoughts. This has been something I've been thinking about for a while, so I decided to finally just write it all out. I've got a set of proposed rules I'm working on for CP too, but I don't know when those will be done. I don't expect them to take any of this advice, but it can't hurt to discuss it. --Brian 15:23, 16 August 2007 (CDT)

I kinda have a problem with the citations part.

"Anything that would be obvious to a freshman in high school (13 years old) doesn't need to be cited"

"If an editor claims a statement is "obvious" it shouldn't be hard for them to come up with a citation to demonstrate it to a doubting user"

That seems somewhat contradictory. Also, define what's obvious to a freshman. Different schools teach different things at different rates. Thunderkatz^Ho! 15:32, 16 August 2007 (CDT)

The freshman in high school thing is just because that's the grade level their articles are supposed to be written for. Any boundary is going to be hard to define, but it seems clear that a freshman (even one in an immoral public school) should know that grass is green or that George W. Bush is the current president. It's things like declaring that the American Bar Association pursues a liberal agenda [1] that need citations.

That final point I had made about being able to find a source was aimed more at the editors who delete the {{fact}} additions and argue on talk pages that they don't need to provide sources because something is obvious, like the whole RobS "New Ordeal" issue. I wasn't intending that anything that can be cited should, just that editors should provide a citation (most likely just on the talk page) if someone legitimately doesn't believe an "obvious" statement to be true. --Brian 15:41, 16 August 2007 (CDT)

One comment: point 2 under goals might come across as a bit too critical with the compendium of ships, etc....[[User:Sterile|<font color="purple">ŠтΈṜȳŁЁ</font>^{[[User talk:Sterile|<font color="green">and...?</font>]]}]] 15:48, 16 August 2007 (CDT)