User:Tennessee Ernie Ford/Shortcuts/Longevity is no substitute for research

Longevity is no substitute for research
Sometimes, contributors argue that something must be true since it has remained on the wiki (in one or more articles) for a long period of time. However, there are lots of reasons that inaccuracies persist:


 * Fandom: a few are passionate about a topic and no one confirms their research.
 * Unexpected impact: Something changed (usually undocumented) and no one caught the secondary or tertiary impact on other articles.
 * Rumor &rarr; Fact creep: A plausible theory on a talk page was boldly posted as a speculative note, which later was converted to a serious note.
 * Larger bladder: Sometimes, the last edit belongs to the only person who didn't get tired of arguing (or need to attend to other RL issues).
 * Trust without verification:
 * A plausible idea is boldly posted. Others assumed good faith, but forgot to check the facts.
 * A trusted contributor makes a mistake, and people forget to check the facts.

Examples
The only reason this section is anemic is that, fortunately, this wiki has done very well in removing/fixing fallacies. The only way to document them is to thoroughly check histories of articles as one edits to see if an incorrect item persisted for a long time or was introduced more recently. That is a lot of extra work on top of making sure that the current edit is reasonable.


 * Inaccurate info about salvageable upgrades that had been on the wiki for ages.
 * For years, several articles listed unsubstantiated drop rates for ecto. (The numbers might even be reasonable or correct; the point is that they were posted without verification and are now quoted throughout the GW-player base as accurate.)
 * QCT and Talk:QCT: it took a year before someone challenged the claim that QCT was still possible.
 * Hero's Handbook: Data in title maxing table was wrong for well over a year before it was fixed. Fix.
 * For four years, Ascalon Army included Lieutenant Fisk and Coporal Timlin, although they have never been seen in the game and do not have articles on the wiki. They were added in April 2007 and not removed until June 2011.