On 12/19/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 19/12/06, Sarah slimvirgin@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/18/06, zero 0000 nought_0000@yahoo.com wrote:
Perhaps there is another useful way to look at it: consider the legal database to be "the" source, rather than a collection of sources. Can I say something like "Legal opinions found in the LawIsUs database uniformly favor Y"? (The wording may need tweaking.)
The problem is that material we use as sources must be available to the general public, and it's not clear that we can expect the public to have access to a legal database.
Er, what on earth? No, rubbish. It's the source, it's checkable.
We use writers as sources, not databases and libraries. If Zero wants to say that all legal opinion says X, he should find a secondary source who confirms that, rather than relying on his own, possibly faulty, search of a database, and then calling the database the source (even though there are no documents in the database that say "all legal opinion says X"). What he means, in fact, is that HE is the source, and that he used the database to do his research, and that's what makes it OR.
Also, we have to depend on you having conducted the search correctly, which you may not have done if you have no legal education; and we have to depend on you correctly describing the opinion that you say is uniformly favored, which you may also not have done.
That's a separate issue.
It's a separable issue, but it boils down to the same thing, viz. that we publish the published views of third parties (what they believe is in the database, for example), and not the views of Wikipedians.
Sarah