Sourcing
Is sourcing an important thing for an encyclopedia? In the beginning, in order to get a head start, Wikipedia ignored sources, allowing articles to be unsourced and as such, few had any real references.
Nowadays, there is a large number of people on Wikipedia who think that sourcing is not important, that if Wikipedia asks for references and sources, it means that it does not trust its users; that asking for sources would turn Wikipedia into the Nupedia, and that’s a Bad Thing™. They also believe that Wikipedia should not do a strong fact-checking like the elitist Academia, but should keep very lax standards on verifiability.
The main problem with unsourced affirmations is that when a later editor can’t know whether it’s true or false. It happens that the unsourced articles are unreliable: the editors write from their unreliable memories wrong or misinterpreted information, heard from the neighbours of their Aunt Edna or read on forums and blogs. Malice, albeit not very common, is also a cause of the wrong facts in Wikipedia. Misinterpretations occur on sourced information, too, but at least then, one can verify the facts more easily.
Nevertheless, Wikipedia has been moving toward more stringent standards. It is clear that the English Wikipedia has a fair coverage of the main topics in the world today and it has to think about the next step. Jimmy Wales says that now Wikipedia must now focus on reliability. A few policy changes have been made — for example, administrators can now delete any article which fails to describe why it is notable. And also, when creating a new article, one gets a big message written in friendly letters:
Articles that do not cite reliable published sources will be deleted.
Unless they’re written about non-notable things, the articles are not currently deleted, but at least it makes people aware that adding sources is important for Wikipedia.