Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2006 22:54:31 +0100 From: Guy Chapman aka JzG Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Who wins
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On Thu, 20 Apr 2006 14:09:58 -0700 (PDT), you wrote:
So I wonder if it would be more pragmatic to drop these arbitary thresholds and just say "sources are required". Each article has the best sources we can find for that topic. If the best sources are blogs then fine - the reader is left to him/herself to determine notability based on their own frame of references.
This has been suggested at WP:V but was soundly rejected as being functionally equivalent to "articles must cite sources unless you can't find any". There is a good reason that encyclopaedias typically do not document facts which cannot be verified from reliable sources: a significant proportion of them turn out to be false.
Consider: you wish to promulgate a "Fred is Gay" meme (you are a not a friend of his, as we know friends of gays should not be allowed to edit Wikimedia projects). So, you set up your blogs on LiveJournal and Blogger, publish it, and then toddle off to Wikipedia to complete the writing into canon of your new shiny meme. Job done. Can you see how that might be bad? Guy (JzG)