[WikiEN-l] Let us not attack sources as unreliable without reason

[slimvirgin at gmail.com]

I've occasionally written "this information has not been independently
verified" after a statement made by a source I regard as dodgy or
self-interested, but this shouldn't be done often because all sources
can be questioned to some degree; and then, as Jay says, it starts to
look POV that only certain sources are picked on for that degree of
scrutiny.

I feel Bjorn did not come to the mailing list with entirely clean
hands in this matter. He has previously used quite questionable
sources for other edits himself; he accused Bard, based on nothing
solid, of not even having read the UN progress report; and he implied
that Bard had been evasive when, in fact, Bard had simply not answered
Bjorn's second e-mail. Bjorn also did not tell Bard the information
was for Wikipedia, which I feel he should have done. Also, once Zero
had obtained the report and suggested a way to word the reference to
make it accurate, and Tony had edited that onto the page, Bjorn
decided to create an entirely new category, and moved the information
out of the UN section and into a new section called "Incomplete
estimates" (even though Tony's edit made it clear the estimate was
incomplete, and the words "progress report" imply that anyway.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Estimates_of_the_Palestinian_Refugee_flight_of_1948&diff=9614990&oldid=9614450

This begins to look like POV pushing and not just careful scrutiny of
source material.

Slim

On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 11:28:51 -0500, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
>And the way *not* to handle them is to put caveats beside them
>stating (in so many words)  that "we have not been able to verify
>these as truthful" (which, of course, we don't do).  Doing so, of
>course, would be highly POV, since it would naturally create the
>impression that the sources were suspect and untrustworthy, rather
>than the actual case that certain editors are unwilling or unable to
>check the primary references.