On 3/26/06, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
--- jayjg jayjg99@gmail.com wrote:
No, of course personal communications are not valid to cite. You can cite reliable published sources.
When they exist, yes. But that is not always the case. Sometimes one must rely on what reputable people say vs what they write. I've cited professors whose classes I've taken. Is that wrong?
Hi Daniel, all our sources must be published in some form. If your professors have published the same material in a book or paper, we can use that, but not if they simply say it in a classroom situation. The key to whether a source is citable on Wikipedia is (a) whether it's in the public domain, and (b) whether there's some form of third-party editorial oversight, no matter how minimal, as there is when an editor goes through a book prior to publication, or when a newspaper copy editor checks a news story for factual errors or legal problems. In the case of a professor giving a lecture, the quality of the material is the same as in a self-published book or personal website, where there are no third-party checks. Self-published material is only allowed to be used in articles about the professor himself, and only if he is speaking about himself and not about any third party. There are exceptions if the professor is well known, but even then the self-published material must be in the public domain. It can't be an oral communication, because then readers have no way of checking that you've communicated it accurately, or that the professor stands by what he said. See [[WP:V]] and [[WP:RS]].
Sarah