Wikipedia:But there must be sources!

This is an essay on Wikipedia:Deletion policy.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

Shortcuts

This page in a nutshell: Don't just claim that there must be sources out there somewhere. Instead, prove it, by providing them.

You may be confident that sources exist, but asserting this without proof is unlikely to convince anyone who believes that they don't. They may well have reached that conclusion by searching for references and failing to find any. Closing administrators on AfD debates will frequently afford unsupported assertions less weight. The best and most reliable way of convincing both doubters and the closing administrator is to actually provide the requested sources rather than simply declaring you're sure they must be out there somewhere.

Wikipedia's verifiability policy is one of its core content policies and demands that all material included in the encyclopedia must be sourced, or it may be challenged and removed. While some editors believe that, strictly speaking, this right of challenge only extends to material thought to be factually incorrect, in practice material is challenged on a variety of other grounds including notability concerns, relevance, undue weight, original research, etc. Articles can be, and frequently are, removed on these grounds. The burden of proof is on those who add or defend the contentious material to provide sources that satisfy the concerns of the challenging editor.

Insisting the sources must exist without being able to provide them is generally to be avoided in deletion discussions. Hypothetical examples include:

Keep – This is obviously notable, so it could be referenced. Prejudger 01:01, 1 January 2001 (UTC)
Keep – There must be plenty of sources. Presumer 01:01, 1 January 2001 (UTC)
Keep – You should find sources, instead of deleting it. ItsUpToYou 01:01, 1 January 2001 (UTC)
Keep – There are 20,000 google hits for some or all of the words in the title so surely there are sources. NeedleHaystack 01:01, 1 January 2001
Keep – You need to show there are no sources. ProveANegative 01:01, 1 January 2001
Keep – I expect that sourcing is available to verify basic facts Expector 01:01, 1 January 2001
Keep – Other people will be able to provide references. HaveFaith 01:01, 1 January 2001
Keep – I've seen sources but I won't tell you what they are or where I found them. YaGottaBelieveMe 01:01, 1 January 2001

We keep articles because we know they have sources, not because we assume they have, without having seen them. Any claim that sources exist must be verifiable. Unless you can indicate what and where the sources are, they are not verifiable.

Keep in mind, as well, that if all you had to do to prevent an article's deletion was to guess at the possibility that better sources might exist than anybody has actually found, then even outright hoaxes would not be deletable anymore, because anybody can say this about literally any article whether its topic actually exists or not. If you are so sure that enough quality sources exist to salvage the article, then find those sources and show them.

Note that sometimes editors posit an even weaker version of this argument: but there may be sources! All criticism of the stronger argument applies in such case too, of course, plus the slippery slope to extreme inclusionism (but there is a tiny chance there are sources... but maybe sources will appear tommmorrow... etc.).