On 3/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevage(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 3/4/06, The Cunctator <cunctator(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Just so you know, I'm an editor that thinks
taht weblogs and web
forums are acceptable sources.
I think providing a source is a lot more important than trying to
ensure its reliability--let the reader provide their own determination
of the weight to give to the source.
I trust readers more than I trust journalists, frankly.
That's an excellent point. Since we're providing the source, and since
weblogs are typically easily accessible, doesn't a rule against
weblogs fly in the face of "Wikipedia does not strive for truth, but
verifiability"? Sure, if you had even better sources, you might not
want to clog your article up with stuff drawn from weblogs...but if
you're directly quoting from a blog, where's the problem?
The problem is something of a slippery slope one -- i.e. whereas
newspapers etc. are extremely controlled, blogs are extremely
uncontrolled, and both lack for accountability and reliability for
different reasons. But at least we have a historical understanding of
the fallibility of traditional media, and fewer people understand the
strengths and weaknesses of blogs/websites/electronic-only media.
But a lot of the bias against blogs is, in my opinion, simply the
classic problem of trying to make Wikipedia resemble traditional
encyclopedias. People forget that Wiki is not paper.