On 5/26/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On 26/05/06, Anthony DiPierro
<wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote:
On 5/25/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com>
wrote:
Precisely my point. It is an editorial judgment.
We can't say "just
because it is true and verifiable we should post it in wikipedia".
So you believe that ranting criticisms on blogs constitute
"verifiable" information?
Ranting criticisms on blogs certainly constitute verification for
writing "It has been claimed he eats babies". They do not constitute
verification for "He eats babies".
Not according to [[wp:V]] they don't. "Anyone can create a website
or
pay to have a book published, and then claim to be an expert in a
certain field. For that reason, self-published books, personal
websites, and blogs are largely not acceptable as sources."
I've always taken "verifiability" to mean verifiable *in a reputable
source*. Some people disagree, of course (apparently you're one of
them), but I wasn't aware that Jimmy Wales was one of them.
I would assume this means they're not acceptable as sources for facts
that they claim; it seems hard to argue that they aren't credible
sourcees for the statement that they made said claims. The main purpose
of putting this policy in was to avoid people adding weird things like
"Mint cures cancer [source: some random website claiming so]".
For example, I would see nothing wrong with our article on [[Richard M.
Stallman]] citing something he wrote on his personal website and
attributing it to him. His personal website saying "[x]" is not a
reliable source for the statement "[x] is true", but it *is* a reliable
source for the statement "Richard Stallman has said [x]", much as a
company's official website is not necessarily a reliable source for what
a company actually does, but *is* a reliable source for what the company
describes itself as doing.
With the personal websites of people less famous than RMS, I don't think
the verifiability issue changes; what changes is that the statement
"Some Guy has said [x]" becomes insufficiently interesting to merit
inclusion in any article.
-Mark