On 4/26/07, Jeff Raymond
<jeff.raymond(a)internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
Mark Wagner wrote:
*90% of these articles have neither footnotes nor
references.
*About half have only links to official or fan websites.
*25% have nothing that could be considered a source under even the
most generous definition.
You do realize that many of these were likely sourced to the "official"
biographies on the official/fan websites, right?
If the article in question can only be sourced to such websites (university
bios, musical group bios, fan websites) or can only be sourced to current
newspaper articles, and there are no other sources available, no matter how
hard we look (no traditional encyclopedia entries, no who's who, no "music
of the 1990s" book entries, no printed bios or interviews in magazines, etc)
then that seems like a reasonable point to consider whether we need the bio.
Remember that short official bios and newspaper articles rarely give a
person's life in complete, npov detail... but without more sources, neither
can we.
For authors we also have dust-jacket bios. They are far from complete,
but they are NPOV to the point of blandness.. The result may be a stub,
but that at least can put the author in somw kind of historical context
and environment.
Ec