From: David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au
I see no reason why each of the thousands of secondary references
shouldn't
have attention paid to them in principle. We have a reference checking project, after all.
A great idea, in principle.
As I said, it's susceptible to abuse by the querulous. But that's an editor problem. How far is too far? At what point do we cull querulousness without forestalling questioning of a reference seriously considered (in good faith) to be dubious?
I don't know how to quantify the general rule, and seriously doubt that it could be quantified. Suffice it to say, however, that when editors are not editing in good faith, this problem will arise. In the case of the particular citation we have been discussing, the "abuse by the querulous" line was crossed days ago, and this was borne out when the primary sources were finally located.
Jay.