[WikiEN-l] People editing their own Wikipedia articles.

[Bryan Derksen]

Christopher Larberg wrote:

>I don't see what's so bad about having subjects of articles edit their
>own articles. They may be able to add information unobtainable elsewhere
>(after all, you can't get a much better source than the subject matter
>his/herself).
>
If it's not obtainable elsewhere, how can it be verified? It's also very similar to original research, IMO.


>There's the danger of POV-pushing, of course, but I don't
>see it as much different from fans of something editing the article(s)
>about the object of their fandom. We certainly shouldn't discourage
>anyone from editing, in my view.
>  
>
The difference is that non-fans can in principle look up all the same 
sources as fans, checking the things the fans write for accuracy. If 
someone writes an article about their own personal experiences without 
any outside sources to refer to, on the other hand, how can I check it? 
I'd be reduced to just asking the editor "Um, really?"

I faced this dilemma a while back on the Space fountain page, wherein 
Keith Lofstrom, the originator of the space fountain concept, stopped by 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Space_fountain and wrote up a 
description of the history of how he came up with it. I've asked him to 
copy and paste it onto his own homepage so that we'd have an outside 
source to refer to, until then I'm not really comfortable putting it in 
the article.