On Tue, Jan 06, 2009 at 08:57:30PM -0500, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
I also dispute that many of OUR biographical articles are written entirely from primary sources. If they are they should be flagged as problematic.
This is partially because the standards we permit for sources on biographies of living people are incredibly lax. I view this as an unfortunate side effect of the desirable goal of having thorough sourcing.
For examples of the actual sourcing we use for biographies (forget about primary/secondary for a moment), scroll through the list of references at [[George W. Bush]] or [[Barack Obama]]. In addition to the majority of references to newspapers and newsmagazines, I see referneces to MS Encarta and Encyclopedia Britannica. And these are high-profile bios that presumably represent some of our best work in sourcing.
- Carl