2011/7/27 David Richfield <davidrichfield(a)gmail.com>om>:
Lots of ethnographic work is very strongly based on interviews with
people who have an oral tradition. This is then published and, quite
correctly, cited in Wikipedia: the view is that it is then a secondary
source, and hence appropriate. When we directly source oral
interviews and host them on a sister project, the complaint is that
this is a primary source: prone to small sample sizes, unscientific
data gathering, and hidden biases on the part of the interviewers.
Some Wikinews reporters have introduced their interviews as sources on
Wikipedia, with some success -- linking directly to an audio recording
of the interview, not to the Wikinews story -- but there has been
resistance to it.
I've often wondered why we don't introduce video and audio recordings
to our articles, showing interviews by Wikipedians of notable primary
sources. It would make our articles significantly more interesting and
reader-friendly, and would tie in directly with efforts to record oral
histories.
Sarah