I think there should be a burden on the writer to make a coherent point, that is novel and either interesting or useful. That could include evidence for the central claims they are making, or just a logical argument using existing widely believed assumptions.
I don’t think that means having citations for every single claim, especially ones that are reasonable, common-sense claims. If a commenter wants to present strong evidence that commonsense claim X is false, that’s fine, but what I have seen (at least a few years ago) is someone merely pointing out that you don’t have evidence causing the writer to get downvoted and lose the benefits of being promoted or getting karma.
I think there should be a burden on the writer to make a coherent point, that is novel and either interesting or useful. That could include evidence for the central claims they are making, or just a logical argument using existing widely believed assumptions.
I don’t think that means having citations for every single claim, especially ones that are reasonable, common-sense claims. If a commenter wants to present strong evidence that commonsense claim X is false, that’s fine, but what I have seen (at least a few years ago) is someone merely pointing out that you don’t have evidence causing the writer to get downvoted and lose the benefits of being promoted or getting karma.