[Wikipedia-l] Are we running out of sources

[Lars Aronsson]

Many articles lack sources. I just happened to look at a biography 
of a Swedish journalist, born in 1968. He received some fine 
awards, and there is no doubt he is notable enough. But the 
article has no sources. Ten years ago, in 1999, for a journalist 
born in 1958, I would just look him up in the Swedish "Who's who", 
which was published every two years. But that title seems to be 
discontinued.  Or if another issue is ever published, it comes 
with much longer intervals.

Such reference works go the same way as printed encyclopedias and 
dictionaries.  For a young, ambitious journalist today, being in 
Facebook and Linkedin (and Wikipedia) counts just as much as being 
in Who's who did ten years ago.

Should I use the journalist's Linkedin profile as a source?  I 
don't think that is acceptable.  All sorts of lies could hide 
there.  And users could remove themselves from Linkedin or edit 
their profile at any time.  Old issues of Who's who don't change, 
they are a stable reference.

But the fact is, Who's who is/was also based on user-submitted 
autobiographies.  The editors made a list of people who "should" 
be in there, and sent invitations with a form where the person 
could fill in details about family, education, career, 
publications, awards, and hobbies.  I'm not sure how the editors 
fact checked the entries.  Perhaps the risk of public shame was 
enough to keep people from lying.

Printed editions have another advantage for the historian. If a 
Swedish person "forgot" to mention in the 1945 edition that they 
received a German medal of honor in 1938, perhaps that information 
can be found in the 1939 edition.  In this era of Linkedin and 
Facebook profiles, how can we ever dig up information from the 
past, that a person wants to hide?



-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se