On 3/14/07, Ken Arromdee <arromdee(a)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