True, never thought about anonymous sources. In that case, some sort of verification network could work okay, though it's always going to be tradeoffs regardless of what route is taken.
However, there's no excuse for stories based on public sources not to link to or provide a reference for those sources. If your source is another news site, blog, wiki page, forum post, video, etc... then you should damn well be linking to the original. Doing otherwise is like taking ownership of someone else's work, especially if you do what some sleazy sites do and rehost the original work as well.
However, there's no excuse for stories based on public sources not to link to or provide a reference for those sources. If your source is another news site, blog, wiki page, forum post, video, etc... then you should damn well be linking to the original. Doing otherwise is like taking ownership of someone else's work, especially if you do what some sleazy sites do and rehost the original work as well.