On 6/7/05, Geoff Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
And I'm sure that there are other issues one could discuss. However, if we could agree that published sources -- either primary or secondary -- can be cited, but unpublished works can not be, this would solve most of the problem.
That is a position that I could stand behind.
I would be opposed to a suggestion that we should limit ourselves to published sources that can be acquired through Amazon, Google and the average inter-library loan service, however.
Obviously, the easier the sources can be accessed the better, but I would not rule out using rare or old books, magazines and newspapers even if not commonly archived, small publications, and foreign language works.
That said, I think that outside a certain vanishingly small subset of very controversial articles, Wikipedia's problem is not the citing of hard-to-verify sources, but the absense of sources at all. Outside the context of Israel vs. Palestine, certain crackpot science theories, and a few other controversial places, I don't see much of a problem at present.
And I'd rather someone cite an unpublished source than none. It's always possible that a better reference than that unpublished source may be findable by someone else, or a published source that references that unpublished one.
-Matt