2009/4/29 <wjhonson(a)aol.com>om>:
The main problematic sources are not the ones from the
19th century,
but rather the pseudo-historical ones that are being spewed out like
.... spew, right now. I picked up a copy of Laurence Gardiner's book
"Bloodline of the Holy Grail" for a buck, not because I think it has
any substantive worth whatsoever (which it does not), but because I
wanted to track down what his sources were for his absurdly fantastic
genealogical charts.
My "absurdly fantastic" I mean "wholely lacking in evidence and in some
cases utterly preposterous to boot".
One of the most educational aspects of working on Wikipedia is
realising just how bad other sources (including all journalistic
"reliable sources") can be, and that the main practical difference
between us and them is that here you can see inside the sausage
factory, there you can't.
- d.