The Cunctator wrote:

On 11/28/06, Tony Jacobs gtjacobs@hotmail.com wrote:

...

Of those that were independent, they fell into three classes: some made only a passing mention of GNAA, some were articles where GNAA was only mentioned in the message board responses at the bottom, and those that were actually *about* GNAA were blogs (there were one or two of those). We use plenty of internet sources (not the least of which is IMDb, and I've seen plenty of citations to online mags like Salon and Slate), but blogs have been deemed below the threshhold.

Which is ridiculous, because blogs are a medium, not a particular source. Banning all blogs as sources is absurd. A much better policy, one which respects the reader rather than treating him like a child, is to source the articles properly. If the source is a blog, the reader can supply his judgment in how much credence to give the source. Similarly with say, the New York Times, CNN, or the Washington Times, or Pravda.

The reader can only supply judgment about the credibility of a source if there is some information upon which to exercise that judgment. The reason blogs get singled out as a category is not because they cannot ever be useful sources, but because so few of them provide the information a reader would need to decide how it stacks up against other sources. (I assume that the reader won't make the decision based on the fact that it's a blog, since as you rightly point out, that's only a label for the medium in general.)

For example, the existence of independent sources is essential, both to maintain a neutral presentation and to avoid gullibly repeating falsehoods. But when you have a blog of unknown provenance, it's impossible to know whether it qualifies as independent (Wal-Mart Across America, anyone?). At some point, editorial judgment requires that certain material should be rejected when offered as a source, and if that's all the material available on a particular subject, then we have to decline to write about it.

--Michael Snow