On Dec 27, 2008, at 11:58 PM, Wilhelm Schnotz wrote:
I thought the last time I checked subjects were asked to *not* edit their pages... And generally when they do... Someone shouts COI at them.
(I generally agree with subjects not dictating their pages but some of the users that deal with COI in the past were not always that nice to the subjects.... Anyway, I just wanted to point out that subjects don't get THAT much leeway. St leafy not as of 3 months ago.)
Though this is irrelevant to the discussion. This problem exists primarily for externally published sources. Here's the basic situation where we hit a problem.
Person A is a scholar working on Technical Subject X. Person B publishes a scholarly article in a peer-reviewed journal attacking Person A's work. Person A responds to the article at length - the venue here doesn't matter particularly, but let's say it's in a peer- reviewed journal as well.
In the article [[Person A]], Person B's article is a secondary source, and can be summarized freely. But because a primary source cannot be used for claims that are not easily verified by non-specialist readers, Person A's response, which is a primary source for [[Person A]], cannot be used the same way to respond.
NPOV problem.
-Phil