In a message dated 3/29/2008 4:01:42 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, bobolozo@yahoo.com writes:
I've actually been using it as explained in WP:V, not WP:RS, as WP:V is policy and RS is not. Note that the subject of this thread mentions WP:V)>>
------------- That's an interesting take on things. I think you may find that, may I be bold to state, that every major contributor to V acknowledges that RS is the place to go to ask about Reliable Sources. Not V.
We have RSN to handle exactly the question of whether a source is a reliable source or not. The V talk page editors in fact, redirect these sort of questions to RSN. If you are trying to imply that RS should be sort-of overlooked in favor of V I think you'll find the consensus is that it should not.
As to your extreme position that "totally unreliable sources" should be glossed, I doubt anyone here would agree that anyone here is supporting that position. By holding an extreme view, you discredit the people who would much rather see these issues go to RSN for community discussion on *specific sources*.
What I think we do not want, is tendentious mass-deletions of sources, which the editors in those articles have accepted, by a person who has not actually investigated the source, but is only characterizing it by its *type* instead of its veracity.
Wikipedia is nothing if not grey. Which is why, on RSN, we generally divert hypothetical discussion into specific discussions. Hypothetical discussion of types of sources ends up too many times generating situations that we'd wish to avoid.
Will Johnson
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I've not had much in the way of problems with people trying to invoke the most flagrantly non-reputable sources, though I'm having a fight at the moment over a Catholic legend about a supposed deathbed conversion of Geo. Washington. More commonly the problems I've had have been over "reputable" sources which happened to be wrong. This is a difficult situation because some sort of synthesis is necessary to resolve these problems.
On 3/29/08, The Mangoe the.mangoe@gmail.com wrote:
More commonly the problems I've had have been over "reputable" sources which happened to be wrong.
I would think that they only way to show that something in a "reputable source" is "wrong" is to show a stronger "reputable source" that says it's wrong. Otherwise, it's "reputable source" vs "something I just know to be true".
On Sat, 29 Mar 2008, Ron Ritzman wrote:
More commonly the problems I've had have been over "reputable" sources which happened to be wrong.
I would think that they only way to show that something in a "reputable source" is "wrong" is to show a stronger "reputable source" that says it's wrong. Otherwise, it's "reputable source" vs "something I just know to be true".
I still remember the case where the sources say that a covered bridge is closed to traffic, and a guy visited it and it was open to traffic. That's a reliable source in any non-Wikipedia sense, but fails RS and V.
On 30/03/2008, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
On Sat, 29 Mar 2008, Ron Ritzman wrote:
More commonly the problems I've had have been over "reputable" sources which happened to be wrong.
I would think that they only way to show that something in a "reputable source" is "wrong" is to show a stronger "reputable source" that says it's wrong. Otherwise, it's "reputable source" vs "something I just know to be true".
I still remember the case where the sources say that a covered bridge is closed to traffic, and a guy visited it and it was open to traffic. That's a reliable source in any non-Wikipedia sense, but fails RS and V.
And a photo he took of traffic on the bridge would have failed SPS, right? :)
What is "stronger" begs the question. In one case I dealt with, someone who lived on the Eastern Shore of Maryland was claimed to have attended a school in Potomac on the other side of the bay. It's a three hour plus drive from one to the other, and the school in Potomac is not a boarding school. However this was reported by a "reputable" medium, and therefore it became "true", in spite of the fact that it couldn't possibly be true. I finally had to cite a high school yearbook to beat this down, because people were willing to prefer a source even though it could readily be shown to be false.
On Sat, Mar 29, 2008 at 10:10 PM, Ron Ritzman ritzman@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/29/08, The Mangoe the.mangoe@gmail.com wrote:
More commonly the problems I've had have been over "reputable" sources which happened to be wrong.
I would think that they only way to show that something in a "reputable source" is "wrong" is to show a stronger "reputable source" that says it's wrong. Otherwise, it's "reputable source" vs "something I just know to be true".
On Sat, Mar 29, 2008 at 5:26 PM, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
What I think we do not want, is tendentious mass-deletions of sources, which the editors in those articles have accepted, by a person who has not actually investigated the source, but is only characterizing it by its *type* instead of its veracity.
Wikipedia is nothing if not grey. Which is why, on RSN, we generally divert hypothetical discussion into specific discussions. Hypothetical discussion of types of sources ends up too many times generating situations that we'd wish to avoid.
Very much agreed.
To give an example from my own editing (on the subject of railroad matters): I regularly cite UtahRails.net as a source. This is a website owned, operated, and written by a single individual, Joe Strapac. Someone favoring automatic judgment on a source's reliability based only on its publication method will probably have a fit at this point; it's self-published, with no formal fact-checking or editorial judgment standing between the author and his audience.
However, Joe Strapac is a respected author on these subjects, with a large list of published works on this exact subject matter. This makes him a noted authority. The fact is that on such subjects he is very likely to be correct, and he has a lot of professional and personal reputation riding on the quality of his research. Furthermore, the fact-checking his online published work receives from readers of the site is probably just as good as that which his publishers are able to give; they'll simply pass his words to a few other experts in the field for a once-over before publishing, at most.
Sources must be evaluated individually.
-Matt
On 30/03/2008, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
However, Joe Strapac is a respected author on these subjects, with a large list of published works on this exact subject matter. This makes him a noted authority. The fact is that on such subjects he is very likely to be correct, and he has a lot of professional and personal reputation riding on the quality of his research. Sources must be evaluated individually.
For example, I recall Kim Bruning pointing out that an AFD in which Patrick Nielsen Hayden commented on a subject therefore counted as a Reliable Source as to someone's notability, insofar as it was inarguably PNH so commenting ;-)
- d.