[WikiEN-l] Illegal sources

[Steve Bennett]

On 4/7/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wouldn't it also count as Original Research?

I would say so. I've seen this a couple of times, when someone makes a
claim, then provides a link that they believe justifies the claim.
However the link is a primary source, and it is their interpretation
which they believe makes it "proof". Whereas, a secondary source is
usually much more straightforward.

An example was in the Safe Speed article. There were claims along the
lines of "This isn't actually true, Johnson and Thomas proved in 1984
that the speed of a vehicle blah blah...[1]". Whereas IMHO you really
need to cite a direct refutation of the claim, "Smith and Jackson
challenged this claim [2], citing numerous studies including Johnson
and Thomas (1984)".

In other words, any situation that would lead you to visit a website
to verify some claim is already shakey ground. Beyond checking whether
a specific sentence is readily visible on the site, I'm not sure what
could be gained that wouldn't be straying into OR.

Steve

Steve