[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Leadership (was NY Times article on gender gap in Wikipedia contributors}

[Fred Bauder]

> On 4 February 2011 01:32, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at fairpoint.net> wrote:
>> One is expected to use sound editorial judgment. Using British tabloids
>> for a biography of a living person falls outside that remit. One is
>> expected to have some familiarity with what is an appropriate source
>> for
>> the subject.
>
>
>
> That requires people be familiar with such things on an international
> scale. In practice most such sources will be the result of people
> using the first thing that comes up on Google that looks like a news
> source (and the daily mail does rank so well these days) rather than
> any deliberate attempt to use tabloids as references.
>
> Other than getting a database report to list every link to such a site
> within a ref tag there isn't much we can do about it.
>
> --
> geni
>

Totally.

This sort of problem is well suited to the wiki editing style. Subsequent
editors can look for better sources or hedge or even delete the material.
References to blogs, which often contain information much to an editors
liking, are a good example.

Then there is state-controlled media, China's media and government
websites being an interesting example. In China even bold cutting-edge
journals are self-censored; But how can that be differentiated from any
journal's blind spot. For example, peer review for an academic journal
can, in practice, amount to exclusion of material that reflect an
approach to the discipline the peer jury doesn't approve of rather than
actual proof of reliability.

Remember though that the entry point to this discussion was use of
British tabloids for BLP purposes. There controversial material, a
tabloid's stock in trade, may be removed if there is no reliable source.
WP:BEANS There can be no exhaustive list of what might be an appropriate
source for each type of subject.


Fred