14
votes
If a question is challenging high-school level facts, are references required to support them?
YES
No doubts whatsoever here. At the very least, citing a high-school level textbook is an easy way of supporting the answer, and of proving that the answer is high-school level.
Supporting this kind ...
- 78k
12
votes
Does SE.Skeptics specifically require "scientific" references?
However, my answer was downvoted 2x because two people didn't like that I used a non "scientific sources" and/or chose to link to Livestrong. (All of the articles I provided, however, reference ...
- 78k
9
votes
Accepted
Is this answer about illegal immigrants supported by its evidence?
I think this is an example of a very bad answer. In my opinion, this questions is important and hard, so it requires hard data to back up the answer. I have seen no such data.
This is why I ...
- 101
7
votes
If a question is challenging high-school level facts, are references required to support them?
Communication with others relies on sharing a certain level of a common understanding.
Even just looking at Stack Exchanges, different sites have a different base-level expectation of what a typical ...
OddthinkingMod
- 132k
7
votes
Does SE.Skeptics specifically require "scientific" references?
There are several questions here:
Are some references required, or else the answer will likely be deleted?
–– Yes!
Are peer-reviewed sources required, or else the answer will be deleted?
–– No.
Are ...
OddthinkingMod
- 132k
6
votes
Accepted
What if I don't have an online or easily accessible reference?
Ooh, tricky one!
Let's go back to our motivations for the rule here, to see if they help.
One reason for asking for notability references is to demonstrate it isn't just a speculative idea of the ...
OddthinkingMod
- 132k
5
votes
Is this answer about illegal immigrants supported by its evidence?
I'm going to answer a slightly different question. Not "Is this acceptable?" but "Why haven't I taken any moderator action to delete it?"
The general policy on references is that they are required, ...
OddthinkingMod
- 132k
4
votes
Is this answer about illegal immigrants supported by its evidence?
I do not have an opinion on the question that triggered this meta question. Or, I do not wish to express an opinion on that here. I really do not have an opinion on the verity of the answer that ...
- 101
4
votes
Accepted
Should answers without links be automatically marked as unreferenced?
Personal contact might be more effective: less alienating, more explanatory - criticism, but constructive criticism.
Personal contact (interaction with peers) is a reason why people post on the site.
...
- 26.2k
4
votes
Are statements made in patents reliable?
There is a common misunderstanding that patents have to work to be patented.
This is not true.
United States patent laws do not require you to have a prototype in order to apply for a patent, all ...
OddthinkingMod
- 132k
3
votes
Should answers without links be automatically marked as unreferenced?
The better way to solve this in my opinion would be to enable the community to add and remove post notices themselves instead of relying on us diamond moderators. I have proposed a review queue for ...
- 42k
3
votes
Should answers without links be automatically marked as unreferenced?
One of the abilities Stack Exchange has as a platform is to raise informational banners for a given set of criteria, right? Similarly, we could probably do the check for links and pop up the ...
- 5,916
3
votes
Should we insert "citation needed" notices in-line, as opposed to or in addition to referring to an entire post?
Wikipedia also has a large citation needed banner. Our banners are styled after those.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Unreferenced
The idea behind using this banner, instead of single [...
- 78k
3
votes
What to do when the OP misunderstands a claim?
Questions on this website need a notable claim. The misunderstanding by a person who writes a question on this website by itself isn't notable.
Editing the editing so that it addresses an interesting ...
- 32.4k
3
votes
Are encyclopedias a good source?
Encyclopedias are tertiary sources. Tertiary sources attempt to make a summary of the knowledge contained within secondary sources. They're very useful to get a ground floor on a topic before building ...
- 10.4k
3
votes
Accepted
Which flag should I use for unreferenced answers?
No references is not mutually exclusive with VLQ. It can have no references and be quite good (albeit this would not be an acceptable answer here!), it can have references and be quite bad.
I would ...
JamiecMod
- 9,012
3
votes
If a question is challenging high-school level facts, are references required to support them?
Yes
It's important to reference key points, regardless of their assumed level as to do otherwise invites original research.
There's a big difference between something being 'high school level' and ...
- 470
3
votes
Under what circumstances does a references banner apply?
I can mainly speak from personal experience, and what I witness of the other moderators of this site.
I spend perhaps 10-15 hrs per week moderating this site. That is split mostly between handling ...
JamiecMod
- 9,012
2
votes
Is this answer about illegal immigrants supported by its evidence?
As requested by Sklivvz, I'm posting an answer so that people can vote.
I believe this question requires hard statistics. It's a question about probability, so it needs actual numbers. I've already ...
- 1,072
2
votes
If a question is challenging high-school level facts, are references required to support them?
None of the answers so far provide a reference that states references should or shouldn't be provided, and in that sense many that say references are always required are self-contradictory.
Better ...
- 96.5k
2
votes
What to do when the OP misunderstands a claim?
I don't have any hard-and-fast rules (and if the community comes up with some, I will follow theirs), but I think my approach is something like this:
Is this a solitary case of someone simply ...
OddthinkingMod
- 132k
2
votes
Have quality standards for answers been increasing over time?
I'm not going to present data - just a personal anecdote. If someone else has done a systematic analysis, it would be a much better answer.
Are standards rising?
Here is a brief history of Skeptics.SE....
OddthinkingMod
- 132k
2
votes
How should we deal with broken links on posts?
Basically, when we detect a broken link on any post on skeptics.stackexchange.com, the best and only solution would be to find a cached version of the post and link it back. Based in my experience, ...
- 29.8k
2
votes
Should answers without links be automatically marked as unreferenced?
Um, believe it or not, there are categories of fact that exist outside the internet.
Not every biblical manuscript is digitized, for example. There are questions about Christianity that must be ...
- 1,433
2
votes
Does SE.Skeptics specifically require "scientific" references?
Health.SE was heavily modeled on Skeptics. We do have a page of suggested acceptable sites to draw information from. Livestrong was not one of them. Nor was Web.MD, or any personal blog site, any site ...
- 3,071
1
vote
Accepted
Can the Cochrane reviews be regarded as a definitive source of information?
Cochrane formed an official relationship in January 2011 with the World Health Organization (WHO) as a partner non-governmental organization with a seat on the World Health Assembly to provide input ...
- 29.8k
1
vote
Accepted
Site-specific post notice types
I've added the two new types. Let's hope they lower friction on new users.
- 78k
1
vote
Accepted
"This post does not cite any references or sources" while it does?
I've added the banner, it's not automatic.
I understand the banner is misleading, but we add it on questions that do not have enough references. The reason is simple: you need to support your answer ...
- 78k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible