Andrew Gray wrote:
On 13/03/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
Simple corrections from the source itself should just be accepted.
I do this all the time!
Last time I passed through http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Beesley there was a big fight going on over her birthdate. Two sources were being cited; a link to the diff of an edit Angela made to Meta using her logged-in account wherein she announced her birthdate, and a link to the birth records for her claimed birth town that showed someone with her name being born on that day.
The reference to Meta was being rejected on account of it being unreliable and on account of it being a "self-reference" (which IMO is not a correct interpretation of the manual of style guideline against self-reference, it's intended simply to keep Wikipedia's contents location-neutral in case someone else hosts it). Even the old [[WP:RS]] guideline explicitly allows this sort of thing; "Self-published material, whether published online or as a book or pamphlet, may be used as a primary source of information about the author or the material itself, so long as there is no reasonable doubt who wrote the material"
The reference to the birth records were being rejected because it just indicated that _a_ woman with the same name, claimed birthdate, and claimed birth location existed, not that it was the same _specific_ woman the article was about.
Against such obstinate nitpickery, what's a guy to do? I decided not to waste my time and moved on.