On 3/14/07, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Wed, 14 Mar 2007, Anthony wrote:
The policy on sources, WP:ATT, allows self-published sources to be used in biographies of living persons. This means we can use the subject's personal website or blog, so if someone wants to address an issue in their Wikipedia article, they only have to publish it themselves on their blog first, which anyone can set up at no cost.
Setting up a blog can be quite a hassle, especially for a non-techie, even if he doesn't have to pay to get it. Basically, "if you want this fixed, set up a blog" is a big hoop you're making people jump through in order to fix something that they probably didn't even want in the first place.
We could always set up the blog for them.
That's another form of "you can't fix your article unless you jump through these ridiculous hoops". Finding someone in an all-volunteer Wikipedia willing to set up a blog for a random complainer is at least as difficult as setting up the blog himself.
Well, I certainly disagree. Finding one person out of the thousands of volunteers who are capable of doing this seems much easier than teaching a random complainer how to do it himself.
It also seems easier than rewriting all the rules and standards of Wikipedia which rely upon not allowing original research, though this is more arguable, I guess.
Or we could set up a wiki which allows original research, and which can be referenced from Wikipedia.
This won't work, because the attribution FAQ says that Wikis are not legitimate sources. I tried to change it to allow wikis when self-published sources are allowed. It didn't get in.
So, do you actually have a suggestion which doesn't involve changing anything?
Otherwise, allowing a wiki set up by the foundation to be used as a source in Wikipedia articles seems much less drastic than dropping the rules against original research altogether. It also seems to me to provide much better accountability.
Anthony