[WikiEN-l] Verifiability and Africa

[charles matthews]

"Fastfission" wrote

> This kind of stuff is actually a big concern within studies about the
> writing of history (historiography) and the philosophy and sociology
> of science -- what kinds of sources become part of "the archive", what
> sorts of systemic biases are imposed by certain "standards of rigor",
> how demarcation boundaries are really ways of imposing certain
> "regimes of truth", and so forth.

I made this sort of point a while back.  Yes, there's a tension between 
being hardcore about verifiability, and the wish to eliminate systemic bias. 
I would rather reach out, try to fix up the systemic issues, and fuss about 
sources later.  I'm not exactly happy about the subtexts, like 
'verifiability means anglophone sources', which do come up (e.g. the Rajput 
case on the ArbCom).

We still need 'be bold!', in fact.  Consider that there are legal problems; 
but that they are likely to come from the rich.  We should certainly be 
tougher on articles about living Americans than for living Liberians, for 
example.

Charles