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

[Stan Shebs]

Tony Sidaway wrote:

>>Stan Shebs wrote:
>>
>>
>>>References and external links should include at least brief
>>>caveats about quality of sources, just as one sees in good book
>>>bibliographies.
>>>
>
>Quality of source is usually (but not always) POV.  We're supposed to be
>writing NPOV articles.
>A caveat such as "warning: the article relies on population projections
>that were proven by events to be grossly in error" is fine and NPOV.  A
>caveat such as "the claims at this site are patently incorrect" is POV and
>superfluous. [...]
>

Well duh. People who find themselves absolutely certain about the
truth or falsity of various claims should spend a little time in
classics, where it took centuries of work to clear out a millennium
of transcription errors by semi-literate monks, just to recover
documents where we don't know whether they were intended to be fact,
fiction, or historical novel, written within a culture that
disappeared before it could be described scientifically, and using
languages where we have to guess at the meanings of many of the
words, since the few surviving dictionaries are incomplete.

For example, every scholar of the subject agrees that the
"Augustan History" is full of errors, and should not be trusted.
Is that POV? Sure, but the "N" means "neutral", not "no", and it's
perfectly valid to say "low-quality source" when that is the
consensus of the experts. Saying that the "reader should use
common sense" in such a situation is not only a complete abdication
of our responsibility to uphold scholarly standards, but is an
insult to the workers who've spent their lives studying the
material in order to tell us which parts are the most believable.

Stan