[Wikipedia-l] Are we running out of sources

[Yury Tarasievich]

Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Thomas Dalton wrote:
>>> 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.
>>>     
>> What makes you think people didn't lie?
> What makes you think they did?

Because people tend to sort of do this thing, in 
such circumstances -- tone up the positives, 
tone down the negatives. I was translating the 
entries for the equivalent of the mentioned 
biographical dictionaries once. Another example 
is how like everybody's bio in post-Soviets of 
1990s sort of suddenly lost any relation to the 
Communist party.

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