Steve Block wrote:
How do we know reliable sources aren't lying. Every newspaper and source in town reports Colin Montgomerie holed the winning putt in the 2004 Ryder Cup, but it isn't true, Ian Poulter struck the putt that mathematically won the cup. Monty's story simply made better press. If we do, as you say, withhold judgement on whether a source is correct, why do you then say we can't use some sources because they may be lying. Obviously some judgement is at play.
Well, if the source is lying, then by definition it's not reliable. Your example is an object lesson in how newspapers are intermediate in reliability; they are usually better than Joe Random's blog, but not as good as a scholarly monograph that has had multiple layers of review spread over multiple years.
If all this really is "strange and varying criteria" to you, you really need to stop and consider whether WP is the project you want to be involved with.
Maybe you want to check my edit history before you start chucking such accusations about. If you want to make the apology now I'll accept it in good grace. Just because I happen to disagree with you it doesn't mean you get to impugn my edits, my contributions or my considerations of Wikipedia. Get off the soap box. My first edit was http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Helen_Hoyt&diff=prev&oldid... a new article written from scratch and referenced. I have a static ip before anyone pulls that one too.
Seeing the references to that article, I can see where you're coming from. I personally would be very reluctant to, for instance, use rootsweb to source a death date, because not only do we have the problem of identifying *which* person of a given name is meant, but genealogy sites include all the standard howlers, like descents traced to Julius Caesar, which is only plausible if you don't realize how utterly corrupt the primary sources are for the Dark Ages. The "California Death Records" link comes up blank, the oldpoetry.com link has a single unsourced line affecting to be written in the first person, post-mortem ("I lived from 1887-1972.") - kind of spooky actually. So some of your references illustrate well the reasons to be wary of primary sources.
I bring these up not to try to disparage you, but because to me it's what is interesting about scholarship and Wikipedia. Which sources of information are good, which not so good, and why? If they're inconsistent, which is true, or are they both true if you interpret in a different way? I imagine that some day, if it hasn't already happened, a heated talk-page argument over some factual detail will inspire an expert to do some original research and then publish the findings - which we can then incorporate into the article originally in dispute.
Stan