On Sun Mar 26 14:30:49 UTC 2006 Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
Personal communications are valid to cite. All one needs to do to check
is call the guy and ask
the same question.
Mav, personal communications have been banned as long as we've had the [[No orignal research policy]]. The earliest draft of this page explicitly forbids its use:
A good way to look at this distinction is with the following example. Suppose you are writing a Wikipedia entry on physicist Stephen Hawking's Theory X. Theory X has been published in peer-reviewed journals and is therefore an appropriate subject for a Wikipedia article. However, in the course of writing the article, you meet Hawking, and over a beer, he tells you: "Actually, I think Theory X is a load of rubbish." Even though you have this from the author himself, you cannot include the fact that he told you this in your Wikipedia entry. Why not? The answer is that it is not verifiable in a way that would satisfy the Wikipedia readership. The readers don't know who you are. You can't include your telephone number so that every reader in the world can call you directly for confirmation. And even if they could do this, why should they believe you? [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:No_original_research&... oldid=20267486]
Personal communications are often permitted as legit citations in journal articles because (1) the author's reputation is on the line, & (2) chances that someone has contacted the individual quoted to verify that the quotation is accurate are in proportion to the reputaition of the journal. (For example, _The New Yorker_ will almost always fact-check; the _Weekly World News_ never bothers for obvious reasons.) For Wikipedia's purposes, if informaiton in a personal communication is important, it will eventually see print -- & then we can use it.
Geoff