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@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?