On 16/02/2019 12:18, Paulo Santos Perneta wrote:
"/what Wikipedia actually requires: not primary
sources like birth
certificates, but secondary ones
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2NVH21MEe0> – publicly available
sources in which her birthdate is mentioned./" -> This is not exactly
true. That would be the kind of document that could be required by
someone in OTRS in order to certify her birth date. And birth
certificates are issued by official third party, reliable sources, so I
don't see how can they be considered a "primary source". Unless you are
talking about primary sources in History, but in that case those would
often be the best possible sources one can use in a Wikipedia article.
Dear Paulo,
What constitutes a reliable source is a never-ending debate for
wikipedians and historians alike. I tried to make that point in the
Philip Roth anecdote
(you can find it here, it's in French, but I have added approximate
English subtitles :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2NVH21MEe0 )
Is the open letter by Roth in the New Yorker a secondary source ? a
reliable one ? And is the facebook post of Bliss Broyard a reliable
source ? Is it becoming one when it is transcripted in the Salon
magazine ? This is a very tricky point and the raging debates about it
at the time show just that.
You can consider an "oficial" birthdate certificate a reliable source. I
find it questionnable though, as many football players have several
birthdates for example. (And to assure this point is not a
post-colonialist one, It has been recently revealed that French police
were deliberately falsificating immigrants papers to expel them).
But it is certainly not a secondary one. It is not published, so it's
useless to being cited in Wikipedia, and even if some sort of public
archive of birth certificates would exist, they would still be primary.
The process of their production would have not be analysed by a "third
party" as you name it.
Finaly, when OTRS require such papers, is not it to prove the identity
of someone complaining in order to receive their claim, more than a
piece of evidence to be inserted in an article ? If you have a
counter-example, I'd be interested to check.
Yours,
--
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Alexandre Hocquet
Université de Lorraine & Archives Henri Poincaré
Alexandre.Hocquet(a)univ-lorraine.fr
http://poincare.univ-lorraine.fr/fr/membre-titulaire/alexandre-hocquet
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