JAY JG said:
From: "Tony Sidaway" minorityreport@bluebottle.com
That site is clearly not authoritative on the activities of the younger Bush. It is, however, authoritative on the expressed opinions of the anonymous kook who wrote that piece.
It's clearly not authoritative on Bush to you and me. But to the person who cites this (or similar) articles, it is no doubt quite authoritative on Bush, and everything else as well. This problem doesn't go away simply because you feel comfortable making pronouncements on what a specific website is authoritative on.
I think you're mistaking Wikipedia for a website that has unprecedented control over the ability of the reader to make a judgement. If I stated "Ruby Smith of Fatfield County Durham has written an article in which she claims that George Bush is a termite" and cited an article in which a person identifying herself as Ruby Smith living in Fatfield, County Durham and gave a means of verification, then I think most readers would accept this as good evidence that there exists a place in England called County Durham, and in that place there exists a district called Fatfield, and in that district there dwells a woman called Ruby Smith, and the words in the article represent words that she has typed into her computer. The existence of Ruby Smith and her locale can be verified independently. You can phone her up (or whatever) and arrange to meet her and discuss her weird views. So what do you get from that? That there exists a woman in Fatfield who believes that George W. Bush is a termite. And that's it. Someone who is predisposed to believe the statements of random bozoes on the net will read it one way, the rest of us will read it another way. That seems reasonable to me.