On 4 February 2011 01:32, Fred Bauder fredbaud@fairpoint.net wrote:
One is expected to use sound editorial judgment. Using British tabloids for a biography of a living person falls outside that remit. One is expected to have some familiarity with what is an appropriate source for the subject.
That requires people be familiar with such things on an international scale. In practice most such sources will be the result of people using the first thing that comes up on Google that looks like a news source (and the daily mail does rank so well these days) rather than any deliberate attempt to use tabloids as references.
Other than getting a database report to list every link to such a site within a ref tag there isn't much we can do about it.
-- geni
Totally.
This sort of problem is well suited to the wiki editing style. Subsequent editors can look for better sources or hedge or even delete the material. References to blogs, which often contain information much to an editors liking, are a good example.
Then there is state-controlled media, China's media and government websites being an interesting example. In China even bold cutting-edge journals are self-censored; But how can that be differentiated from any journal's blind spot. For example, peer review for an academic journal can, in practice, amount to exclusion of material that reflect an approach to the discipline the peer jury doesn't approve of rather than actual proof of reliability.
Remember though that the entry point to this discussion was use of British tabloids for BLP purposes. There controversial material, a tabloid's stock in trade, may be removed if there is no reliable source. WP:BEANS There can be no exhaustive list of what might be an appropriate source for each type of subject.
Fred