On 2/18/07, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
Plus, I am advocating replacing it with a verifiable and objective list, which they can still play with, just not adding their favourite basketball star. They might have to do some research. Something they could - you know - learn from.
I think I've found the article you were complaining about (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tall_men?) and it's got 150 references already, very few of the entries don't have one. It's also divided into sections by both the centimeter and the inch, so my earlier suggestion about making it so that individual readers could decide for themselves what "tall" meant was already implemented.
Other than the basketball exception I'm really not sure what else can be done with this, it looks fine to me.
The problem is the lack of objective criteria. The references I clicked on verify the height of the people, not the fact that they are notable for being tall. In addition, many of them don't look like reliable sources - there's no obvious way to tell what the basis for the claim on the websites may be. This is the essence of original research - using available information (height of the people) to create new information (notable for being tall) based on a paediatric definition of "tall stature" (2.5-3 sd above mean), with an extra 6 cm added for good measure.
How is that "fine"?