Folks,
There are probably reliable reports that we can use:
(1) reports by state and local election authorities on the elections in
their states or districts;
(2) the debate on January 6 over certifying the vote in Ohio;
(3) essays in political science journals;
(4) books such as the Almanac of American Politics 2006 by Michael Barone
will have articles on the outcomes;
(5) reports on the court challenge.
While blogs can be useful, a lot depends on the credibility of the blogger -
Michael Barone. Like in all articles, we should aim for a neutral point of
view. For example, in the number of articles on voter fraud, there is
precious little on Wisconsin (won narrowly by John Kerry) where an inquiry
found clear evidence of fraud see [
].
Kerry's margin in Wisconsin was much less than Bush's in either Florida or
Ohio by the way. We are now in a situation when reliable sources are
available and more will become progressively available. We should clean up
these articles for NPOV, make sure we use reliable sources in a balanced way
and get rid of the claims in the articles that just don't stack up.
Regards
Keith Old
Keith Old
User:Capitalistroadster
On 10/19/05, Fastfission <fastfission(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The key issue here is not the topic at hand but whether or not it is
verifiable. The main question here seems to be, "Do blogs count as
sources?"
In certain rare cases they ought to be, but in general they are no better
than citing user pages on Wikipedia. If a blog can cite a source, then we
can find that source and cite it ourselves, I assume.
If you remove everything from the article that is cited with a blog, and
everything which is not cited but should be, what do you have? Perhaps it
would be a useful rhetorical technique to try on one of them, whether it
gets reverted or not.
Of course, all of the above rests on the conclusion that blogs don't count
as sources in and of themselves for articles of this sort. The people who
wrote the articles are obviously going to disagree on this, hence the
entire
root of this dispute. I think it'd be nice to have some sort of "ruling on
high" every once in awhile about what counts as evidence and what doesn't
(what Foucault would call defining our "regimes of truth") but I'm not
sure
there's any way to do it systematically or rigorously. But perhaps that
isn't needed -- perhaps a one-time, "this doesn't work in this
situation"
wouldn't be so bad (seems to have worked out with the LaRouchies).
Again, this doesn't have to have to do anything with politics if it is
honestly just a source issue. If "real" sources on these topics come out
later, the articles can be rewritten, simple as that.
FF
On 10/18/05, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Oct 18, 2005, at 1:33 PM, Guettarda wrote:
I see. So saying "obviously you support election fraud" would be
appropriate
too, and not "needlessly" inflammatory? Interesting.
I don't know how to answer this, except to say this. I have taught
freshman composition at a respected university, focusing particularly
on research. If one of my students handed me a paper that used those
citations in that way, I would fail them. Regardless of whether there
was election fraud, the article is a poorly written, POV mess. And it
is not the place of Wikipedia to decide if there was election fraud -
it's the place of Wikipedia to accurately describe the controversy
surrounding it. A controversy that led to no successful challenges to
the outcome of the election, and no lasting media coverage. Instead
of this, though, we have 60,000 words of original research.
-Snowspinner
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