--- Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
In many cases, the issue is further complicated by the question of exactly _how_ a source is used. ... And the NYT and Weekly World News are both more or less easy cases. The difficult cases are partisan publications writing "factually" about political events, and things of that nature.
Right. There are plenty of out unreliable "reliable sources" out there (The Pentagon, etc.). Even after tracing back --from blog to local TV page to major news media to an anonymous source somewhere high up in the Eskimo government --even deriving an "original source" is often just linking to some political page with somebody's claims and interpretations on it.
As I said before sources are often just claims and interpretations, and virtually none of it is "facts." So why should Wikipedia expect to be a higher standard? And of we want to introduce some value judgements about who's interpretations are more correct, we need to understand that such is often too close to POV to deal with without some broader editorial policy (and heirarchy).
The case in point which brought me to post the thread had nothing to do with particular claims though, and had everything to do with OWN (incivil abuse of reverts) with regard to how certain material is presented: as somebody's clinical interpretation, or or as an actual human-readable explanation of a human event or concept. Calls to CITE are too often just smokescreen for a weak or incivil or POV argument, and if you do give a source (some famous intellectual, for example), they say "get a real source" (a 'The Pentagon' spokeswoman for example.) I pay no attention to such calls for "CITE."
The way I interpret that policy is simply as a "give us something, anything" (to click on) policy --it does'nt establish *veracity* (just as reading the lede to [[Truth]] doesnt inspire one to read any more of the article) but it does give people something to click on and feel good about the truthiness of the spun interpretation of facts they are reading. A claims X, B claims Y, C claims Z, [some links at the bottom] is about as good as it gets for any news source at any particular snapshot of time. The "higher standard" is NPOV, not veracity.
-SV
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