Editing Encyclopedia:Historical archive/Policy/Approval mechanism (section)

===Is it needed?===

These are arguments presented for why an additional approval mechanism is unnecessary for wikipedia:

* Wikipedia already '''has''' an approval mechanism; although anyone can edit any page and experts and amateurs of all levels can [[Wikipedia:be bold|be bold]] and contribute to articles, ''communal scrutiny is an approval mechanism, though not as centrally-controlled as [[peer review]]''.

* Imperfect as it currently stands, Wikipedia already fosters a more sophisticated critical approach to ''all'' sources of information than simple reliance on "peer-reviewed" authority. Low-quality articles can be easily recognized by a reader with some or no experience in reading wikipedia, and by applying some basic [[critical thinking]]:
**The style may sound biased, emotional, poorly written, or just unintelligible.
**Blanket statements, no citing, speculative assertions: any critical person will be careful in giving too much credit for such article.
**The history of an article shows much of the effort and review that has been brought into writing it, ''who'' and ''how qualified'' are the writers (Users seem to put some biographical information about themselves on their pages.)
**a sophisticated reader soon learns that the ''Talk'' page is often enlightening as to the processes that have resulted in the current entry text.

* Cross-checking with other sources is an ''extremely'' important principle for good information gathering on the internet! No source should be taken as 100% reliable.

* Some "authoritative" and "approved" encyclopedias don't seem to stand for their own claims of credability. See, for example, [[Columbia Encyclopedia]]'s article about [http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/t/turingtes.asp Turing test], compared with Wikipedia's [[Turing test]]. "Human-like conversation" is not the same as "human-like thought". See also [[Meta:Errors in the Encyclopædia Britannica which have been corrected in Wikipedia]].

* The very idea of an article being "approved" is debatable, especially on controversial topics, and can be seen as an unreachable [[ideal]] by some.