On Fri, 12 Aug 2011, Charles Matthews wrote:
This fails to
be a useful method when the self-published source is the personal
experience of a professional in the industry.
The standard Wikipedian's response to this quandry is "well, if they can't
get a reliable source to quote them, it must not be that important in the first
place", which ignores the realities of the modern Internet.
The standard
Wikipedian's response to the standard Wikipedian's response
is that we have IAR for particular exceptions to a "rule of thumb". The
standard response to that is that the "community" has shown a drift over
time from people who like rules-of-thumb and IAR, to people who like rules,
period. The standard response to that is WP:CREEP. The standard response
to the comment that nobody reads what WP:CREEP says about "Editors don't
believe that nobody reads the directions" is that ... hey, there is a thing
called the "human condition" and we somewhat have to live with it.
True, it's all been said before.
But when you look at what actually *happens* in situations of this sort,
the people who like the rules always win unless the article simply goes under
everyone's radar. There are standard responses and counter-responses, but
they don't all work.
Wikipedia is based around rules to the point where if there's a dispute
between a rule and IAR (even though IAR is technically a rule), the rule
wins unless the person claiming the rule is just one guy. There are enough
people looking for an excuse to get rid of Babylon 5, comics, webcomics, or
MUDs that IAR is never going to win.