User:TransporterMan/Sandbox/5

Mass removals of unsourced material

Though there has been constant discussion at Wikipedia talk:Verifiability about the subject for several years, with many dissenters, there has been an ongoing consensus that:

• Though the best practice is to seek a reliable source before removing wholly–unsourced material or at least to tag it with {{citation needed}} for awhile first, editors should have the right to remove wholly–unsourced material without doing either of those things, but that
• Mass removals of unsourced materials is an objectionable practice which has the potential to cause an editor to be blocked or banned, but the definition of "mass removal" is at this point a Potter Stewart test.

The purpose of this essay is to look at the different types of mass removals of unsourced information with a view to coming up with a formal definition and, ultimately, a prohibition.

Types and factors

In general, we're either talking about the removal of any quantity of information across multiple articles (in general 4 or more articles) or, perhaps, the removal of a large quantity of material from a single article. It is to be remembered that we are only looking at mass removals of unsourced material without first seeking sources.

Factors to be considered:

• Motive. Is motive important? Most editors might agree that such behavior is objectionable if it is done to push or pursue a point of view or to harass another editor, but is it acceptable to do it if the editor's purpose is merely to rid the encyclopedia of unsourced information?
• Prior tagging. Does prior {{citation needed}} tagging make any difference? If so, how long must it be tagged before tagging makes a difference? Does it make any difference if the person who tagged the material is the same person who deletes the material?
• Prior inadequate sourcing. Does it make any difference if the material was sourced at one time, but the source was deleted as not being reliable or as being otherwise inadequate or insufficient (e.g. under WP:BLPSPS for non-contentious information about a living person)? Does it make any difference if the person who tagged the material is the same person who deletes the material? Should there be a requirement that some period of time must pass or that the removal of the source must be discussed before the text removal can take place?
• Age of material removed. Does it make any difference how long the material has been in the article? If age matters, should newly-added material be subject to removal? Ancient material? Only-moderate age material? Do age and prior tagging interact?
• Single-article mass removals. Is removal of a large quantity of unsourced material from a single article a mass removal to be considered here? If so, how much is a "large quantity"? How do the foregoing factors fit in?

Not

Some of these may be objectionable in their own right, but the following types of removals and issues do not come within the scope of this essay.

• Removal of material for stylistic or grammatical purposes.
• Removal of unsourced material in an organized cleanup of changes made by a bad editor (vandalism, POV-pushing, fringe material, unsourced BLP assertions, or the like).