[Wikipedia-l] Are we running out of sources

[Ray Saintonge]

Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Thomas Dalton wrote
>> What makes you think people didn't lie?
>>     
> I can only speak for the Swedish Who's who ("Vem är det"), which 
> has been published 45 times between 1912 and 1999 (roughly every 
> second year), with the 46th edition in 2007 (an 8 year gap and 
> change of publisher, it was discontinued and then revived).  I 
> haven't heard of any cases of fraud.  

Exactly, and it should be up to those paranoiacs who imagine a high 
level of fraud to show some evidence about its extent before they tar 
everything with the same brush of suspicion.

> What I'm coming to is that Wikipedia might have to adopt the 
> method of sending out forms to select people, asking for their 
> biographic details (or for verification or denial of what's 
> already in the Wikipedia article). That doesn't mean we should 
> trust such autobiographic information blindly, but allow this 
> input in a controlled form to make Wikipedia more complete without 
> encouraging the uncontrolled editing of your own article. 

I think that most who do respond will try to do so honestly.  
Verification would still be desirable, but we would start from an 
assumption of good faith.

>  * If we discover false claims or grave omissions in the received 
>    forms, how do we handle the next contact with that person?
>   

False claims would make us suspicious of anything the person says.  But 
what would be a grave omission if a specific question about something is 
not asked?

Ec