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_Refu…
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(a)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.