Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
At 09:43 AM 1/5/04 -0500, Ed Poor wrote:
Daniel Mayer declared that:
...Wikipedia is not a primary source. Once and /if/ that person is able to get a real publisher to publish their autobiography, then and /only/ then do we use their autobiography as a source. We need some sort of filter.
How can you say that Wikipedia is not a primary source?
I thought our original aim was to have articles written by contributors who actually know something about what they're writing. People are always encouraging me to spend less time editing other contributors' work or rewriting factoids I discover on-line on in books -- and more time contributing my unique knowledge of my two areas of expertise: the Unification Church and software development.
When we say that Wikipedia is not a primary source, we mean that information about the Unification Church--its organization, beliefs, and so on--should not be *first* or *only* available in Wikipedia. You as a member of that church know enough to write about it, which is good; it would not be appropriate for the Reverend Moon to use Wikipedia to publish sermons or proclaim doctrine. Similarly, if you have a new and better method of software development, Wikipedia is not the place to proclaim it.
I think in addition, this must be verifiable in other sources, which is why we say Wikipedia is a secondary source. If Ed is writing stuff about the Unification Church that is not available elsewhere, then I don't think that'd be appropriate. If the stuff he's writing is verifiable (perhaps in Church literature, or in books about the Church, etc.), then it's perfectly fine.
-Mark