Adding to that:
From a Wikipedia editorial stance, stating that
"date of birth" has multiple
reliable sources that conflict, is fine.
Books state X, official government
records state Y, both are "RS" enough to be worth citing and the difference
is probably worth noting in the context of her article as well.
So state the facts. It's fine to say "source X states Y and source P states
Q" or the like.
Where it becomes OR is if you then start to draw your own conclusions from
it, which one is "right", etc, if you don't have a good basis to do so.
FT2
On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 2:22 AM, FT2 <ft2.wiki(a)gmail.com> wrote:
We're an encyclopedia. Often sources conflict. If
so, mention what both
sources say. An example where this has happened in another article is here:
<
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_Parliamentary_expenses_scandal#…
See last para of that section. May help you. Another is here, where there
is some genuine historical uncertainty to whether the matter existed or not:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin's_speech_on_August_19,_1939>
Between those two, you should get some good ideas.
FT2
On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 12:43 AM, Rob <gamaliel8(a)gmail.com> wrote:
This may have come up before so if there's a
previous discussion on en
or here, please direct me to it.
Do we have an official stance on using primary sources like the US
census and the Social Security Death Index to prove a case of [[age
fabrication]]? My take on it is that it is prohibited original
research, using primary sources to disprove secondary ones, compounded
by the fact that we could easily confuse the subject of the article
with another person of the same or similar name.
If you want to be specific, here it is: Every published source has a
birthdate of 1918 for the late psychic Jeane Dixon. However the SSDI
has her birthdate as 1904 and the brother-in-law of her nephew swears
on the talk page that the 1904 date is the correct one. I think the
1904 is correct, and it's frustrating because likely no journalist or
historian is going to bother publishing something about such a minor
matter, but my opinion is irrelevant and we should defer to published
sources. Verifiability not truth and all that. Or should we IAR in
cases like this and go with the "correct" date?
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