Daniel Mayer wrote:
Nikola Smolenski wrote:
>I don't really understand what is the problem
with
>autobiographies and why are they more unverifiable
>then biographies written by someone else.
Because Wikipedia is not a primary source. Once and
/if/ that person is able
to get a real publisher to publish their autobiography, then and /only/ then
do we use their autobiography as a source.
We need some sort of filter.
That explains why the autobiographies are a problem
(if you accept mav's premise that we need a filter),
but it doesn't explain why they are more unverifiable.
First of all, sometimes they ''are'' (or might be, I don't have an
example)
perfectly verifiable. And in that case, then they should pose no problem.
And sometimes (non auto-) biographies are equally unverifiable,
in which case those biographies are ''also'' a problem.
But in general -- and in the examples that have come up here --
we run into something that Fred Bauder just mentioned:
:If there are books published, they are self-published, with no reviews.
An autobiography (or sympathetic biography based on interviews)
might well be as POV and unverifiable as a Wikipedia autobiography;
but if it's published by a mainstream publishing company,
then it should attract reviews that will help verifiability
(and along with that, help us make the article more POV).
A self-published work -- vanity book, web page, Wikipedia autobiography --
is less likely to attract the attention that will provide such context.
Note that the existence of verifiability is the key here;
there's nothing wrong with using a self-published book as a source
''if'' there is verifiability despite the odds against it.
Potentially, a Wikipedia autobiography that attracted attention
(say, on its talk page) that led to verifiable sources
could be acceptable -- and such articles can be salvaged
by following up the sources mentioned on the talk page.
But one can't ''start'' with a Wikipedia autobiography
and just hope that people will place sources in the talk page;
we need to have something verifiable to begin with.
Thus a Wikipedia autobiography, when there is no other material,
is not verifiable.
I'm focussing here on verifiability, but there's more than that
to mav's point that Wikipedia is not a primary source.
However, an autobiographer can avoid this by publishing a home page
on a free web hosting service such as Yahoo! Geocities
(or whatever the cool kids use these days);
then Wikipedia's mercilessly edited article
could use that homepage only as a source (and an external link).
But if that homepage is the only biographical material on the person,
then we ''still'' run into the problem of verifiability.
-- Toby