Jonathan wrote:
Matt R wrote:
--- MacGyverMagic/Mgm macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote:
Primary sources are hard if not impossible to verify. Don't use them.
Depends on the topic, I think. Lots of Wikipedia articles survive by citing sources from contemporary news articles, for example. I'm not sure the primary/secondary source distinction is particularly useful for us. I'd argue we need only to make sure that A) the source can be verified to say what it's claimed to say; B) we can have some reasonable basis to believe the source is trustworthy; and C) we don't add any additional interpretation of our own beyond what the source says.
-- Matt
And point C seems like the hard one to determine. If it is not hard, it is at least contentious. For example, let's say there is a statement in a primary source that says: Joe said he saw the ghost.
The article then uses that as a source and changes it to state: Joe believes in ghosts.
It might be true, but it seems like an interpretation based on the possibility that Joe might have actually lied despite his belief in ghosts or not.
"Joe said" already removes this from the person who wrote the sentence; i.e. someone other than the person writing up the incident is the one who saw the ghost. What did he mean by "saw the ghost"? An early experimenter in Roentgen Rays might see this differently from a spiritualist. If Joe is a sceptic attending a séance, he could very weel say the first statement without actually intending the second. I arrive at this without even needing to address anyone's bad faith or lies.
Ec