Well, Stan, I admit to getting up late this morning, but please don't use "arrows" as a metaphor. I'm not attacking William. I really like the guy.
I'm just saying that if he's going to edit a Wikipedia article to say that some POV he personally opposes is "clearly false", then he himself should be cited as the source of that POV.
Dr. Connolley is one of the few people (if not the first) at Wikipedia who play simultaneous roles: neutral contributor and authoritative source.
Everyone else has to cite an "expert" as a source when writing articles. I propose that Dr. Connolley is /himself/ a source. So I created a page for him. It's not a vanity page, as some have termed [[Easter Bradford]], because he didn't create it to publicize himself. It's an article about an expert.
Uncle Ed
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
I'm just saying that if he's going to edit a Wikipedia article to say that some POV he personally opposes is "clearly false", then he himself should be cited as the source of that POV.
I'm coming in with the benefit of not really knowing any of the details of the dispute, so hopefully I can comment helpfully on the abstract issue.
If a person editing wikipedia is the sort of person we'd ordinarily consider a source, then it's perfectly legitimate to attribute something to them, and nearly mandatory if the statement in question is in any way in dispute.
The best thing about this is that it can really help to move the article forward without acrimony.
The only danger here doesn't seem to apply in this case, but is something we should be watchful for in the future of course. And that's the danger of various people coming in and writing on their own pet topics, citing their own unpublished or self-published manuscrpts as authority.
--Jimbo