Jussi, private archives are not "published" and so they fail WP:RS on that
specific note.
Will Johnson
In a message dated 12/25/2008 3:34:13 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
cimonavaro(a)gmail.com writes:
Andrew Gray wrote:
2008/12/23 Wilhelm Schnotz
<wilhelm(a)nixeagle.org>rg>:
I hate to pop into this, but have we thought
about the question of
reader access. By this I mean as it currently is with most of our
sources, our readers are able to verify the articles themselves if
they wish to. If we start to use sources that only certain people can
access, that closes off the ability of the average reader to verify
what we write.
We've discussed this before, in a general case, and pretty much dismissed
it.
Limiting ourselves to easily-accessible sources sounds good in
practice, but immediately runs into trouble. We simply can't write
articles on most of our subjects to a good and reliable standard
without relying heavily on access to print books (which people object
to because they're offline) or subscription databases (which people
object to because they're not accessible to casual users).
(This should be distinguished from, eg, people sourcing things to
private archives; in the former case they're accessible by anyone who
goes through the right channels, but in the latter they may be
literally inaccessible to anyone else...)
This brings to mind an interesting case...
About how to source an un-prejudiced article about the
former Finnish president [[Urho Kaleva Kekkonen]]. A
vastly controversial figure in Finnish politicians.
The problem of sourcing stands thus:
While there have been researchers of varying credibility
writing about Kekkonen (some clearly conspiracy nuts,
others with a clear wish to create a national mythos around
his persona, with no problems about letting the mythopoiesis
be transparent, and some serious seeming researchers), the
big festering problem with "Kekkolology" has been the
asymmetry of access to primary sources that researchers
have had.
The researcher Juhani Suomi long held a near solitary
access to Kekkonens private archives, as he was chosen
by Kekkonens estate holders to create a "definitive"
biography the statesman. This was vociferously criticized
by the conspiracy nuts on the other hand, and at least
on the surface serious people such as his successor
Mauno Koivisto, who wanted in his own retirement
years write a wider historiography of the era, in which
both of them operated (him still as a Prime Minister in
the critical years). The accusations were both about
the inequality of access to the primary sources, but
also about the fact that Suomi might have been a partisan
for the cause of the agrarian centrist party Kekkonen and
Suomi were both aligned with, thus creating a "official"
party historiography of the man.
This inspires me to check out the talk page of that
article, to study how wikipedias editors have solved
that knotty problem.
Yours,
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
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