[WikiEN-l] original research, sources, and verification

[slimvirgin at gmail.com]

Tony, you may be mixing up primary and secondary sources. When you use
a publication from the British National Party (an anti-immigration
nationalist group regarded as racist, for those not familiar with it)
as a source of information about itself, you're using it as a primary
source, which is fine, so long as you make clear where you're taking
the information from.

But if you used a BNP pamphlet or website as a source of information
on the British Labour Party, for example, you'd be using it as a
secondary source. It would be hard to justify using the BNP as a
secondary source for anything as they are not what most people would
regard as a reputable organization. If you were to quote their views
on immigration statistics, say, I would regard the BNP as not a
reputable source for that, because they can't be trusted. If you were
to  cite their existence as an example of opposition to immigration
policies in the UK, and quoted from them in that context, that would
be fine.

The evaluation of what a reputable, authoritative, appropriate source
is, is complex and context-dependent. We can't leave it up to the
reader to make up their own minds, as you say. We're an encylopedia,
and our job is to decipher, evaluate, and summarize on behalf of the
reader, though we try to do that in an unbiased and fair manner. The
fundamental issue in all good research at any level is to cite good
sources accurately and appropriately, so that the reader can follow
your argument, look at the context, and make sure you've summarized
your sources' views accurately. But if you want to use any source
whatsoever, and leave all evaluation of sources up to the reader, you
might as well get rid of Wikipedia and let our former readers do
Google searches instead.

Slim


On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 19:54:58 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway
<minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> steven l. rubenstein said:
> > repute of sources.  Our "official policy" of "cite sources" explains
> > that  claims should come from reputable sources,
> 
> You mean [[wikipedia:cite sources]] says this?  Where does it say that
> sources should be reputable?  What if I want to describe the British
> National Party's official policy on asylum seekers?