[WikiEN-l] Interesting debate over reliable sources

[Erik Moeller]

On 7/9/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Letters to the editor are checked for authenticity by the newspapers
> printing them; in fact, the fundamental thing making a source reliable
> is fact-checking. Usenet posts do not have fact-checkers.

I always find it mildly amusing -- and disturbing -- how conservative
and, dare I say it, naive Wikipedia can be when it comes to comparing
old media with the Internet. Every printed source is held up as a
symbol of journalistic integrity, and a guy in Ohio hacking up a
moderate article about some website 2 hours before the deadline is
considered, per WP:WEB, to make the thing more notable than a hundred
blogs with thousands of readers, because he's a "reliable source." Con
artists like Stephen Glass or Jayson Blair must have been evil
geniuses to pass through the firewalls of fact checking built by the
New Republic or the New York Times.

It turns out that when the New York Times actually writes about us,
they do a crappier job at it than the average blog. But, they are
printed on paper and sold on newsstands. It is almost like the
physical manifestation of news on paper carries with it some magic,
transcendental moment in the age of rapid, electronic distribution.
Those who wikify the 1477th revision of an article about a minor pop
celebrity look to the profession of The Journalist with the awe of
devout altar boys.

Take it from a published author and journalist: the process of
actually taking an article from submission to print is much messier
than you might think, especially in newspapers. Fact checking is often
a luxury; as a writer, I had my articles messed up more than once by
an editor who thought he knew what he was doing -- and my byline ended
up on them. In one case it was so bad that I completely severed my
connection to the newspaper, and had to publish a correction online.

So, let's get back to the case of people posting on Usenet. If you
have a group regular participating again and again in the same
newsgroup, and you want to cite a particular post from that group that
was _not contested_, you can pretty safely assume that it was posted
by the same regular. Sure, you might be dealing with an elaborate hoax
dating back several years. Then again, the newspaper you are citing
might be subject to the very same kind of elaborate hoax. At some
point, you have to start making _reasonable assumptions_.

And if you want to verify that it was really written by person X, then
take off your WP:NOR hat for a moment and send the guy an e-mail.
Problem solved. The assumption that anything posted on Usenet is not
reliable is not reasonable. The assumption that an _isolated_ post
that does not match an established pattern needs to be treated with
caution is much more reasonable. The assumption that, if an author
contests the authenticity of a post, we need to believe them, is
generally reasonable.

And if you want to say "blog X said Y", then of course "blog X" is an
excellent source for that. The question in both cases is more one of
notability and relevance than one of reliability. What needs to stop
is the blind worshipping of printed paper.

Erik