Interesting example popped up yesterday. An article I had written early on got tagged by Can't sleep with {{cleanup-verify}} last night. If I would have written the article now is another issue, but it seemed like a good idea a year ago (and I still think it meets the notability standard).
So here's the problem. I wrote the article about someone I know in real life - not so close that I think I shouldn't be writing about him, but close enough that my information about him came primarily from him talking about himself. It's fairly easy to verify that he holds the position that he does by looking at the web site of the organisation he works for. But is it really appropriate to reference a page that says " For more information on a specific item or on how to make a gift to the Centre from our "Wish List" please call or email [the person] the Centre's CEO and Conservation Manager" to support that he is the conservation manager and CEO? The organisation's web site refers to him all over the place, other publications also refer to him and state his job title - but all of them mention him in passing, much like the above quote.
That said, there's material in the article which I cannot source at this point in time, although it is verifiable, and then there was information which is unverifiable because it refers to hearsay about back-channel negotiations within government. Given that I have the information from more than one source who was in a position to know, I don't doubt the truth of the statement, but it's obviously unverifiable hearsay and OR, so it had to go
On 3/3/06, charles matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
"Fastfission" wrote
This kind of stuff is actually a big concern within studies about the writing of history (historiography) and the philosophy and sociology of science -- what kinds of sources become part of "the archive", what sorts of systemic biases are imposed by certain "standards of rigor", how demarcation boundaries are really ways of imposing certain "regimes of truth", and so forth.
I made this sort of point a while back. Yes, there's a tension between being hardcore about verifiability, and the wish to eliminate systemic bias. I would rather reach out, try to fix up the systemic issues, and fuss about sources later. I'm not exactly happy about the subtexts, like 'verifiability means anglophone sources', which do come up (e.g. the Rajput case on the ArbCom).
We still need 'be bold!', in fact. Consider that there are legal problems; but that they are likely to come from the rich. We should certainly be tougher on articles about living Americans than for living Liberians, for example.
Charles
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l