User:Ling.Nut/V-challenged

Some reasons why the "challenged or likely to be challenged" wording of WP:V should be taken as a minimum threshold rather than a gold standard:

Credit where credit is due

• Summary: not citing analytical conclusions is expressly disallowed by WP:OR, and is a form of academic dishonesty.

Also known as Wikipedia is Unable to Reason. Scholars deserve credit for their work; they should be cited when we present their ideas. This is true regardless of whether the ideas are controversial or the scholars themselves are inherently notable. One insidious manifestation of a lack of giving credit where it is due occurs when articles form conclusions or offer analyses (e.g., "it seems reasonable to propose..."). Wikipedia has no analytical insights. It is unable to form conclusions. The fact that such analyses are offered in "Wikipedia's voice" (i.e., not cited to their originators) is a sin of omission. It deprives scholars of the credit for this analysis, making the text look and smell disturbingly like original research. Regardless of whether the conclusions offered actually are WP:OR, this kind of "synthesis" affords Wikipedia the role of making judgments and forming reasoned conclusions. That role is not one permitted to Wikipedia; it is expressly disallowed by WP:OR. In the interest of academic integrity, all such analyses should be credited to the scholars who proposed them.

Karnak the Magnificent

Wikipedia is not an expert; it's a tertiary source. It is not qualified to look into the hearts and minds of people and explain the contents therein. Wikpedia also was not around to hear what anyone said. For this reason, cites are needed in spots that seem to be examples of mind-reading, or where words are being put in peoples' mouths, or where imputations/accusations are being made. Wikipedia accidentally misrepresents itself as something other than a tertiary source when such statements remain uncited.

Two-edged sword

The idea that Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia is a two-edged sword. Wikipedia is the online encyclopedia that "anyone can edit." One of the consequences of working in this medium is that unlike paper encyclopedias, at any given moment we do not have complete control over the published product. For this reason, Wikipedia needs more palliatives (not safeguards) than do paper encyclopedias. Palliatives are needed to aid the process of removal of content that is malicious, misguided or just plain wrong ("tripling the number of elephants in Africa").

Verifiability trumps style

The arguments against this idea always and everywhere converge to WP:IDONTLIKEIT—inline cites are ugly, they're awkward, they're distracting, etc. However, the corollary to the two-edged sword of WP:NOT is that in Wikipedia, at least, verifiability trumps style.

Palliatives, not safeguards

It's true that inline cites/Harvard refs don't prevent sneaky vandalism, but that is a straw man argument at best and a Chewbacca defense at worst... the goal of cites is not and never has been to prevent vandalism; it is to make it easy for dedicated editors to track down the exact wording of the reliable source in question in order to correct vandalism. This is because it is always quicker and easier—sometimes much quicker and easier—to determine whether a given fact is present in a specified location than it is to start from scratch and track down a source confirming or refuting it. Inline cites provide the location that we need to query to confirm that the information is present.

Fallible police & cost-benefit at the margin

The argument against this idea is that dedicated members of the Wikipedia community are effective in policing content. However, the gaze of the policing editors is not unblinking, and is not fixed evenly across all Wikipedia. Many articles have "guardian angels", but many others do not. Even among highly visible articles such as Hillary Clinton the policing effort is vulnerable. The presence of an inline cite would not have guaranteed that a dedicated editor would have taken the time to verify that (mis)information, but it self-evidently would have reduced the marginal cost in terms of the time and trouble required to do so. This in turn favorably impacts the cost/benefit decision an editor faces when deciding whether to attempt to verify content. This principle is robust across all content domains, whether or not editors choose to take advantage of its virtues.