Sven Manguard, a Wikipedia volunteer, recently published an essay in which he noted that over 5% of the articles in English in the community-authored encyclopedia contained no source citations for the "facts" they assert. Manguard concludes with a plea for help in tackling the backlog - the "monster under the rug," as he calls it.
A staff member of the Wikimedia Foundation (which owns and operates Wikipedia) responded, acknowledging workflow and management problems in how articles are created and maintained in Wikipedia:
It seems that this pattern comes up over and over again; where things are seriously broken, it's because there's no system to channel resources appropriately. So you need to make appeals for heroic behavior. This is unsustainable.
Manguard and the author of the article below point to Germany, whose Wikipedia volunteers have a quarterly competition (Wartungsbausteinwettbewerb or "maintenance component competition") to combat their backlog.
If you want to help, you can go to the Wikipedia community portal page.
If you are looking for reliable sources to cite, visit the library and ask a librarian!
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