Jossi Fresco wrote: [[Spoo]] is a featured article whose references are mostly Comuserve, GEnie and Usenet forum postings. Those postings turned out to be reputable sources for information on Spoo, after intense scrutiny by large numbers of editors. There are even articles that are about entities that are solely or primarily confined to Usenet itself; [[Kibology]] for example. It'd be hard to have any sort of article there at all without basing it on Usenet postings in some way. I suppose you can put them up for deletion, but I strongly doubt they'll fail to pass.

Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote: But this is orthogonal to the issue of reliable sourcing. Jossi started by arguing against the "general principle that each article should be based on the most reliable sources available for that topic." The notability of the topic _itself_ wasn't originally an issue.

On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 16:14:39 -0700, Jossi Fresco <jossifresco(a)mac.com> wrote: Obviously if a Harvard professor has a blog we can treat what he says there as fairly reliable in terms of his field of expertise, but it has a much lower inclusion threshold than peer-reviewed journals. Yes is of course the messenger not the medium which is the measure of reliability, but the medium also establishes the bar to publication and thus the amount of external scrutiny the message has received. I am always wary of articles where there are vanishingly few real sources. The Game is a classic example: the only non-Internet source we've ever been able to find is a single mention in a Flemish newspaper, which may well have got its information from the same blogs as everyone else. We don't have any idea how thorough the research was which underlies that particular space filler. You'd have thought that something which is reportedly a global phenomenon would have attracted more than one mention in real media, wouldn't you? It comes down, I guess, to how one views Wikipedia: do we aspire to be an accurate and verifiable source of information, or is it a place where in the absence of anything better we can simply repeat what is noised about, regardless of whether we can show it to be accurate or not. My bias is probably evident in the phrasing here :-) Consensus from involved and knowledgeable editors is very dangerous. Look how many involved and knowledgeable editors think that crop circles are of paranormal origin, the "Church" of Scientology is not a cult, Remote Viewing is a science, the World Trade Center was brought down by the Evil Corrupt Gubmint (TM). Here of course we have others involved, but consensus does not scale well; in the case of a minor crank theory it is very possible to find a consensus of 100% of all three involved editors agreeing that it most certainly is valid. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

On Oct 9, 2006, at 7:06 PM, Matt Brown wrote: The problem here is that we have two reliabilities in play. The first is "is the source reliable enough to be used in the article," which we're basically sane about. Nobody has gone in and eviscerated [[Spoo]]. The second is using reliability as the latest code for notability, In this case, a standard for notability that is flagrantly different from the practical standard used in articles is used as a cover for deleting articles, often being used to ignore the numeric consensus on AfDs because [[WP:RS]] is cited in [[WP:V]], essentially giving it a pseudo-policy status, despite its deep flaws. What is particularly dangerous here is that it tends to be done unilaterally, and then supported on DRV, which has, as has been previously noted, been overrun by lunacy. [[WP:RS]] is merely comically useless in the first case. It is wildly dangerous in the second, and such unilateral moves should be just as unilaterally overturned until such a time as we have a process for reviewing them that is not dominated by an unrepresentative sample of the community. -Phil

Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote: That's an appeal-to-motive fallacy. Even if this were true (and don't forget to assume good faith) and it's the reason Phil is complaining, it's still entirely possible that the "reliable sources" guideline is still flawed and Phil's arguments sound. If [[Spoo]] can maintain featured article status while being based largely on things that WP:RS explicitly says "should not be used as primary or secondary sources", something is clearly broken somewhere. I consider the Spoo article to be of very good quality so I'm inclined to believe it's WP:RS that's the problem.

On 10/10/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman(a)spamcop.net> wrote: en.culturepedia.org ? Oops. Someone grabbed that. Maybe wikiculture.org -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com

On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 22:31:21 -0600, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca> wrote: I don't regard the argument as sound. Anything which is verifiable *only* from sources with absolutely no bar to publication is not, in my view, formally verifiable at all. Guy (JzG) -- http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

On Oct 10, 2006, at 1:58 AM, Bryan Derksen wrote: What may work for [[Spoo]] may not work for [[New_anti-Semitism]]. The main issue here is if we are dealing with a controversial topic, a biography of a living person, or an ongoing enterprise. In these cases, the need for reliable sources is paramount. In the case of Spoo, if we do not have the article 100% verifiable to reliable sources, nobody will be harmed, really. -- Jossi

On Oct 10, 2006, at 4:22 PM, David Gerard wrote: So, let's fix it. -- Jossi

On Oct 10, 2006, at 7:11 PM, Jossi Fresco wrote: Depends entirely on the author. Did you have one in mind? -Phil

On Oct 10, 2006, at 4:43 PM, Sarah wrote: Wikipedia without [[WP:V]] is not an option worth considering. Hope that all respected editors that have seen what it takes to fight POV pushers, trolls, and the likes, would not be inclined to reduce the strength of that policy. My not so humble opinion. -- Josi

On 10/10/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote: WP:V doesn't rely on WP:RS, and I don't know why anyone thinks it does. WP:V is the policy. WP:RS is just a set of opinions; it arguably shouldn't even be a guidline, because anything decent in it is just copied from V, and anything else is confusing nonsense. WP:V, however, is very much in functional form and does a lot to keep the project safe. Can you say a bit more about your position on the post from the folk singer's partner? That caused a lot of confusion, especially the bit about Jimbo saying Wikipedia should use WikiNews as a source (which just pushes the sourcing problem back a stage, given that anyone can edit WikiNews just as they can Wikipedia). The position you took on that does put you at odds with many, probably most, editors, so it's worth explaining, and you were pretty irritated about it at the time, which I couldn't understand. Sarah

On Oct 10, 2006, at 8:21 PM, Sarah wrote: I think it's something about how the first link in the policy page, in the second sentence, is a link to WP:RS. "Facts, viewpoints, theories, and arguments may only be included in articles if they have already been published by reliable and reputable sources." -Phil

On Oct 10, 2006, at 8:31 PM, Sarah wrote: Entire sections of it amount to "see [[WP:RS]]," Sarah. This isn't a simple matter of delinking. The two have grown entwined. Separating them requires major revision to policy. Fixing RS does not. -Phil

On Oct 10, 2006, at 5:48 PM, Sarah wrote: Agree 100%. Try delinking it and read the policy with an open mind. You will be surprised how well it works without the fluff at [[WP:RS]] -- Jossi

On Oct 10, 2006, at 5:09 PM, Phil Sandifer wrote: I respectfully disagree. [[WP:V]] can stand alone and it is functional with or without the help of [[WP:RS]] -- Jossi