Frankly, given the rules creep and bureaucracy mongering that happened the last time we installed a citation requirement for anything I am quite firmly opposed to this suggestion. I am also not convinced that there is an actual problem here - we are not aiming at becoming an authoritative source akin to Wikipedia and I don't know of any reputational problems that UN pages have - nor that the effort would be spent better elsewhere - Useful Notes pages are kind of adjunct to our stated purpose.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
In terms of facts, we are like Wikipedia but even worse. I don't mean that negatively, I just mean that if you want to look something up and your thought is "Oh, I'll look on TV Tropes!" then you should probably seriously reconsider where you get your information from.
To me, Useful Notes are like a pamphlet; it's just a brief intro to get people intrigued in a subject or topic. If they want to delve deeper into that, then they should go look on other sites.
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
The most I can see is adding a banner to Useful Notes pages. Something like "We're not Wikipedia; while this page deals with a real-life topic, we're concerned only with helping readers understand its depictions in fiction. Don't expect it to have the same level of fact-checking as a dedicated source on the subject, nor even the same priorities in which information is included or left out."
Edited by Prime32 on Apr 6th 2019 at 3:54:13 PM
1. To debunk common media stereotypes.
2. To help you understand some media better.
3. To educate, inform, and sometimes entertain.
The purpose of the Useful Notes pages are stated above, and despite me feeling that there's enough rigor put into them, there's a glaring omission for a group of pages that's mainly meant to inform people; there are no citations. Now, I know that TV Tropes isn't as rigorous as The Other Wiki, but I've seen many people on other sites give TV Tropes flack for being a "hotbed for misinformation." Although covering all the work pages is a futile effort (and runs counter to the wiki's mission policy), my opinion is that Useful Notes should at the very least have some citations to show that the information at least comes from credible sources; whether it be Wikipedia style or otherwise.
I know it's going to take a lot of work, but a lot of people take the information they read at TV Tropes at face value, for good or for ill. I think it's best to at least take responsibility for the pages that are actually meant to be informative and to show that they're actually backed by solid facts, not just hearsay.
Edited by handlere on Apr 1st 2019 at 3:23:00 AM
Seen in the profile picture: the Gundam Flauros Rebake Full City, piloted by McGillis Itsuka, captain of the Turbines