Andrew Gray wrote:
On 13/03/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp(a)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.