<<In a message dated 1/6/2009 5:19:38 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, cbeckhorn@fastmail.fm writes:
A reader who knows nothing about the material is in no position to worry about whether the sources have been cherry-picked, and has to trust whoever wrote the article.>> -------------------------
We editors exist as a community to also watch each other. We don't exist in a one-to-many relationship with our readers. We are a many-to-many relationship. We patrol each other as well.
If the community has decided that it doesn't trust an article built using solely primary sources, than that is what it has decided. This is not to say that you cannot write in that fashion. Only that the community has decided that articles written that way are more suspect than others written with a mixture of primary and secondary sources.
Will Johnson
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On Tue, Jan 06, 2009 at 08:35:34PM -0500, WJhonson@aol.com wrote:
If the community has decided that it doesn't trust an article built using solely primary sources, than that is what it has decided.
If by "community" you mean "WP policy" then no such decision has been made. It is perfectly acceptable to write certain articles entirely from primary sources. Indeed, many biographical articles are written entirely from primary sources. But I agree that most articles that can be based mostly off of secondary sources should be based off of secondary sources.
I think we're drifting away from the original topic, which was not whether secondary sources in general are preferred. Nobody disputes that they are.
- Carl