Hi!
On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 19:31:29 -0700, Silas Snider wrote:
If one kind find no sources, one should not put the
fact in the
article! This is basic citing policy.
Wasn't that exactly the question? Whether another WP is a potential source or
not?
Especially since birth and death dates are usually not all that specialised
knowledge, and I do expect them to be mostly right, and I would not expect
them to be sourced. We do not source every comma (although some people seem to
think this is a good idea), and who would put in -- especially given how much
sources a current article cites -- an extra source for that sort of facts? Not
exactly many.
I have also given a good reason for putting that information in, even if, say,
there is a risk of a typo and it's a year off or two. (Which is, btw, a risk
with every source.) I rather had
"John Smith (183x to 189x) was a writer who wrote about race relations."
than
"John Smith was a writer who wrote about race relations."
Same goes for art -- if one is looking for artists of a certain period, the
risk of a year off or two is hardly relevant; somebody born in 1520 would not
paint much differently from one born in 1522. They would however probably have
painted considerably differently from one born in 1020/2.
Again, what I say is that I prefer some less-than-idealy-sourced information
to no information at all, especially when it comes to such rather less
critical information about dates. (Interpretations of facts are a wholy
different matter, as in "was a liberal" etcpp.) And in some cases (such as
birth and death dates), one can simply reasonably expect that a fact is, with
a quite high degree of probability, at least mostly correct. (My my, what a
relativist sentence.)
YMMV, of course, and we might have to agree to disagree.
Greetings from Cologne,
Alex
--
If you don't go over the top,
you can't see what's on the other side.
--- Jim Steinman ---
Alex' Assorted Homepages:
www.alexsite.de