[WikiEN-l] The new verifiability policy

[The Cunctator]

What you're saying is
a) just about right and
b) certainly not what the current policy says.

On 3/4/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've been trying to get my head around why we even have a rule about
> what an acceptable source is. It seems to me that this is how things
> should work.
>
> A WP article must only exist if its subject has been referred to in a
> reputable source (notability, mostly). This source should, but need
> not, be cited.
> Information in WP articles must be verifiable. This means either:
>  - the information is directly verifiable (eg, you could figure out
> who to ring up to find whether a train timetable was accurate)
>  - or, the information has been published by a secondary source. The
> source must be either reputable or cited. Ie, if the information has
> been published in a peer reviewed journal, then not having cited that
> source is not a major problem (someone else can find it later).
> Similarly, quoting a weblog is ok, as long as the source is given,
> since readers can evaluate its reputability for themselves
>
> Is this a reasonable ruleset? At the moment we seem to have nonsense
> rules flying around like every piece of information added must be
> cited to a reputable source, which is neither common practice, nor
> practical, nor desirable.
>
> If this ruleset is ok, then developing guidelines flows naturally. If
> you think information breaks one of the rules, you can remove it. If
> you think it has never been published anywhere reputable (and a
> disreputable source is not provided), then remove it to the talk page.
>
> Note that I'm setting the bar quite low here - obviously it is
> desirable that we cite sources. But we need to be strict about exactly
> what should never be in Wikipedia.
>
> Steve
>
> On 3/4/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 3/4/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> > > I wrote:
> > > > Those interested in verifiability, and in particular whether
> > > > "insufficiently verified" information can be rightfully removed,
> > > > might be interested in a controversy bubbling over at the
> > > > [[Jeffrey Vernon Merkey]] page.  That page contains information
> > > > critical of Merkey which was derived from the [[Linux Kernel
> > > > Mailing List]]...
> > >
> > > Never mind; the issue is a bit more subtle than I appreciated at
> > > first.  It's not that unflattering things were said about Merkey
> > > on the mailing list.  It's that Merkey *did* unflattering things
> > > on the mailing list, things that have been amply documented
> > > elsewhere.  (I remember reading about them at the time.)
> >
> > See [[Wikipedia:Verifiability/Proposed revision]] for one that boils
> > things down.
> >
> > I think it's a good idea for the question of "what's an acceptable
> > source" to be distinct to the rule of verifiability. The latter is
> > central to Wikipedia; the former is a much more contentious and fuzzy
> > issue.
> >
> > People need to understand that primary sources are always acceptable.
> > E.g. if you're referring to a mailing list archive to discuss the
> > mailing list archive, or (for example) the text of someone's post to a
> > mailing list, that's totally fine and what historians and journalists
> > of computer history do all the time.
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