Stan Shebs wrote:
Steve Block wrote:
Isn't that the very definition of a primary source. Something we seem loathe to allow. We can't state that "these words were used in this document on this date". We can't state that this thing existed at this web address on this date. Sorry, but this is the same thing as providing a citation for a factual claim made in an article. The OED make the claim of a specific usage or first usage, and use web sources to provide the citation.
The difference is that OED editors are experts exercising professional judgement and putting their reputations on the line when they make their assertions.
I thought Wikipedia was an attempt to write an encyclopedia without worrying about professional judgement, that we could add anything and as long as it was written from a neutral point of view and was verifiable it didn't matter. I hadn't realised that we couldn't do some things because Dave said so.
WP *really* doesn't want much to do with primary sources;
No, that's your opinion of what Wikipedia does and doesn't want. We have the occasional featured article built on primary source, so the community may not agree.
very few
amateurs even know how to evaluate the trustworthiness of a primary, or how to reconcile multiple contradictory primaries, and we just embarass ourselves when we play at that. Unfortunately many WP editors are unaware of how much they don't know.
No, that applies to Wikipedia across the board. Not many people know on what topic to start an encyclopedic article, if we look at the speedy category. That doesn't stop us creating new articles. And that's ignoring the logical flaw in your argument; that the people telling us we can't use primary sources may actually be the wikipedians who are "unaware of how much they don't know". Swings and roundabouts. We used to judge info on a case by case basis. Now we have hoops we can all jump through and strange and varying criteria we have to meet. Welcome to Wikipedia, not a bureaucracy in name only.