On Fri, 11 Nov 2005, Bryan Derksen wrote:
The difference is that non-fans can in principle look up all the same sources as fans, checking the things the fans write for accuracy. If someone writes an article about their own personal experiences without any outside sources to refer to, on the other hand, how can I check it? I'd be reduced to just asking the editor "Um, really?"
I faced this dilemma a while back on the Space fountain page, wherein Keith Lofstrom, the originator of the space fountain concept, stopped by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Space_fountain and wrote up a description of the history of how he came up with it. I've asked him to copy and paste it onto his own homepage so that we'd have an outside source to refer to, until then I'm not really comfortable putting it in the article.
On seeing the name "Keith Lofstrom", I had to re-read that paragraph a few times. He falls into a very tiny set of people who both deserve an article on Wikipedia & also know me well enough to say more than hello.
And what makes your exchange with him all the more puzzling is that he was in the audience of my talk about Wikipedia this summer, & I could have sworn I mentioned the concept of "no original research" in that talk. I do know I've chatted with him a couple of times about making contributions concerning himself, & that it was a good idea for him not to do so. (I even offered him my help in working with Wikipedia.)
So I guess I let the project down by not training him well enough. My apologies to all.
Geoff