"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