On Wed, 28 Mar 2007 20:54:24 +0100, "David Gerard" dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
the blind idiot worship of print sources in [[WP:RS]] doesn't help make us a better encyclopedia.
That really helps move the debate along...
Actually I think the main thing which makes a reliable source reliable is having some kind of editorial review process and a bar to publication. That is to define a reliable source in the sense that a newspaper is a source - which is a valid definition as far as secondary sources go. we should draw, in the main, on secondary sources, because that is what an encyclopaedia, in the main, does.
Sometimes we also draw on primary sources. The benchmark here is not, in my view, reliability, but authority. If Joe Bloggs is an *authority* on mediaeval history, then it is valid to cite JoeBloggs.com in support of arcana in articles on mediaeval history. Probably. The problem is it might be [[Eric Lerner]], not Joe Bloggs - as non-experts it is very hard for us to tell the difference. So we fall back to requiring that most things be filtered through the editorial processes of dependable secondary sources, and that should work well enough.
This does not prevent us using non-traditional secondary sources, where they have processes in place which make them trustworthy. The BBC website has some excellent material, for example.
Do remember, though, that when we use primary sources we substitute our own judgment for editorial or peer review. That's fine as long as it's me making the call, because in the main I trust my own judgment, but what if it's that notorious POV-pusher David Gerard, who is well-known for trying to slipstream support for his seditious view that an open Wiki can provide a reliable and accurate distillation of human knowledge? This is nonsense, as any fule kno and surely we cannot allow such crypto-communist propaganda to infect the project. Or the reverse, depending on who's adding the content. "This is good because I said it's good and I know these things" is a dangerous argument on Wikipedia.
Guy (JzG)