Abstract: Test the world-models [at least somewhat] scientifically by giving others and yourself opportunity to generate straightforwardly and immediately testable factual predictions from the world-model. Read up facts to make sure you are not wrong before posting, not only to persuade.

I have this theory: there are people with political opinion of some kind, who generate their world-beliefs from that opinion. This is a wrong world-model. It doesn't work for fact finding. It works for tribal affiliations. I think it is fair to say we all been guilty of this on at least several occasions, and that all of us do it for at least some problem domains. Now, suppose you have some logical argument that contradicts other people's world-model, starting from very basic facts. And you are writing an article.

If you source those basic facts, there's what happens: the facts are read and accepted, the reasoning is read, the conclusion is reached, the contradiction with political opinion gets noted, the political opinion does NOT get adjusted, the politically motivated world-model generates a fault inside your argument, you get entirely counter productive and extremely irritating debate about semantics or argumentation techniques. In the end, not a yota changes about the world model of anyone involved in the debate.

If you don't source those basic facts, there's what happens: the facts are read and provisionally accepted, the reasoning is read, the conclusion is reached, the contradiction with political opinion gets noted, the political opinion does not get adjusted, the politically motivated world model generates wrong fact expectations about basic, easily testable facts. The contradiction eventually gets noted, the wrong world-model gets a minor slap on the nose, and actually does decrease in it's weight ever so slightly for generating wrong expectations. The person is, out of necessity, doing some actual science here - generating testable hypotheses from their theory, about the facts they don't know, having them tested (and shown wrong, providing feedback in somewhat scientific manner).

Unfortunately, any alterations to world model are uncomfortable - the world models, as memes, have a form of self preservation - so nobody likes this, and the faulty world-models produce considerable pressure to demand of you to source the basic knowledge upfront, so that the world-model can know where it can safely generate non-testable faults.

Other giant positive effect (for the society) happens when you are wrong, and you are the one who has been generating facts from world-model. Someone looks up facts, and then blam, your wrong world-model gets a slap on the nose.

Unfortunately that mechanism, too, makes you even more eager to provide and cut-n-paste citations for your basic facts, rather than state the facts as you interpret them (which is far more revealing of your argument structure, forwards facts to conclusion vs backwards conclusion to facts).

One big drawback is that it is annoying for those who do not actually have screwed up world-models, and just want to know the truth. These folks have to look up if assertions are correct. But it is not such a big drawback, as them looking up the sources themselves eliminates effects of your cherrypicking.

Another drawback is that it results in generation of content that can look like it has lower quality. In terms of marketing value, it is a worse product - it might slap your world model on the nose. It just doesn't sell well. But we aren't writing for sale, are we?

Other thing to keep in mind is that the citations let separate hypotheses from facts, and that is very useful. It would be great to do so in alternative way for basic knowledge. By marking the hypotheses with "i think" and facts with strong assertions like "it is a fact that". Unfortunately that can make you look very foolish - that fool is sticking his neck out into guillotine of testable statements!. Few have the guts to do that, and many of the few that do, may well not be the most intelligent.

And of course it only works tolerably well when we are certain enough that incorrect factual assertions will quickly be challenged. Fortunately, that is usually the case on the internet. Otherwise, people can slip in the incorrect assertions.

Ahh, and also: try not to use the above to rationalize not looking up the sources because it's a chore.

edit: changed to much better title. edit: realized that italic is a poor choice for the summary, which needs to be most readable.