Jimmy Wales wrote:
Travis Mason-Bushman wrote:
Or, perhaps, we could consider that if there are
no indisputably reliable
sources about a living person, we should not have an encyclopedia article on
that person until such reliable sources are available. Or is that too
difficult a concept to grasp?
Loosening our "reliable sources" criteria is all well and good when
considering something like Pokemon or Star Wars characters, but we're
talking about the lives and reputations of real people, and I am vehemently
opposed to weakening the criteria for biographical sources.
What we write appears on one of the most popular Internet sites in the
world, and there is a moral and ethical imperative for us to be responsible
and prudent when talking about real people. Yes, that means accepting only
sources which are clearly reliable to support information of a negative
nature.
You have my full and unreserved support in this.
It all sounds reasonable as a general concept, yes, but as far as I can
tell it is actually irrelevant to the main problem here. We have a
source that according to everyone who's familiar with the field is
reliable, but which is being stigmatized by the fact that it happens to
be in a blog format. This is not a question of loosening standards as
far as _reliability_ is concerned since the problem with the source is
not its reliability but rather its format.
Also, adding "or is that too difficult a concept to grasp?" is a pretty
lame means of argument, implying that anyone who disagrees is simply too
stupid to understand the obvious correctness of the position. I'm hoping
that this is not part of what you're giving full and unreserved support to.