Sam Fentress (Asbestos) wrote:
On 12/21/05, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
It occurs to me that in academia, one occasionally sees "personal correspondance" or "publication forthcoming" cited. Is there something wrong with stating "The New York times gives Jim Smith's birthday as 24 May 1964, although Jim has stated that it's 24 May 1965[1]" where [1] is Personal email to Wikimedia Foundation, 5 Nov 2005. It's verifiable in the sense that you could always email Wikimedia and ask them if that's true. Steve
If it's a personal email to the Wikipedia Foundation, or to our lawyers orsomething, then that's a different matter. The problem is that the WikimediaFoundation aren't the ones putting the facts in the articles. It's ifUser:RandomName puts in a new date of birth and cites at the bottom"Personal Correspondence". There's no way we can check if that's true, andthere's no one to turn to if the article's subject starts demandingcorrections and accountability.
Sam
Sam You said ''There's no way we can check if that's true, andthere's no one to turn to if the article's subject starts demandingcorrections and accountability.''
This seems to be where we see thing differently. I know birth, marriage, divorce, hometown, college, and employment are verifiable. If you have the _correct _information it is pretty easy. If someone provides valid ID (a mixture of distant and current) and gives Wikipedia the correct information, then we should be able to confirm it from outside sources. This is fact-checking not original research. -- Sydney Poore Go Bengals!