[WikiEN-l] The Economist on "notability"

[Philip Sandifer]

On Mar 13, 2008, at 9:46 AM, David Gerard wrote:

> On 13/03/2008, Todd Allen <toddmallen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 6:40 AM, White Cat
>> <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> Reliable sources? For an episode? Let me think how can we get  
>>> that... Hmm...
>>> Hmm... Oh RIGHT! How about the episode itself? Its quite reliable  
>>> and
>>> verifiable. Each time you watch it it is the same story, same plot.
>
>> That is not a reliable, independent, secondary source.
>
>
> And sourcing is not a bureaucratic checklist. The source text being
> discussed is obviously relevant to an article and, if objectively
> checkable, certainly citable.

Indeed. Comments like Todd's are deeply baffling to me. As an active  
scholar working on areas of popular culture, I cannot imagine any  
justification for going to a secondary source, independent or  
otherwise, for something as straightforward as a plot summary. Were I  
peer reviewing any paper that did that, I would reject it out of hand  
for egregiously sloppy research.

While I recognize that Wikipedia's goals in research are different  
from active professional scholarship, I would suggest that a policy  
that amounts to "use laughably bad sources instead of good ones" is  
not one that we actually mean.

-Phil