James Hare wrote:
This is my opinion about references: Each one to its
own.
What that means is that depending on the topic, we should use sources that
are appropriate. Something like science and history should typically always
use peer reviewed publications, however webcomics do not have peer reviewed
publications about them. That would be an appropriate time to invoke sources
that would be more unorthodox for traditional scholarly subjects like
science: blogs. I, for one, would trust a web comic blog about web comics
because that's the best there is.
Likewise, just because something is appropriate for one subject, doesn't
mean it's appropriate for the next. If a web comic blog says that George
Washington crossed the Delaware and defeated the Hessians, we shouldn't cite
that web comic in our article about George Washington.
This brings up another point of debate: using primary sources. There are
times when primary sources are appropriate, and there are times when it's
not. When quoting what someone famous said, the primary source is *the best*
source for that information. That's what primary sources are for: pure facts
(like what someone said). And then there are the times when secondary
sources are more appropriate. Use those, then.
There really isn't a source, or type of source, that is perfect for every
kind of knowledge imaginable. Each one to its own.
We used to have a policy which actually expressed what you said. It was
called Wikipedia:Verifiability. Unfortunately, over time people became
concerned that allowing an article on the Webcomic Foo meant that we
might also have an article on Joe Blogg's Grand Theorum of Everything.
So they rewrote a perfectly good common sensical policy so that it
became a legal document which would be used to remove all possible use
of case by case logic, and Wikipedia in part became an arena for lawyers
to battle it out. Somewhere, if you listen really quietly, and block
out all the white noise, you can hear the sound of someone tapping away
at writing an actual article. I'm sorry, but I have a bad cold and I've
just had the worst back handed compliment possible directed at The
Adventures of Tintin. This is one hell of a way to create a free
encyclopedic resource. And before anyone asks, no I can't think of a
better one.
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