slimvirgin@gmail.com stated for the record:
On 5/6/05, Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.org wrote:
Just for the record, where is the policy stating that Usenet /cannot/ be used? I'm not being sarcastic; I genuinely don't know.
The relevant policies state that Wikipedia sources must be published sources, and that the publishers must be, in some sense, reputable, authoritative, and credible. These terms are impossible to define, but they boil down to relying on publishing houses that have some form of fact-checking procedure, or peer-review if it's an academic subject. Sometimes the degree of fact-checking will be minimal, but there should be some infrastructure within which information is checked, complaints are responded to, and obviously authors are usually not anonymous.
None of these things applies to Usenet. It is pretty much the definition of a source that should not be used (except in very limited circumstances as primary-source material). See [[Wikipedia:No original research]] for more details.
So, to summarize, there is no policy stating that Usenet is forbidden as a source. Some people (you, for instance) do not consider it to be reputable source, but nothing forbids some other people (me, for instance) from disagreeing. And, most importantly, there is no policy permitting anti-Usenetters to delete Usenet-based material /just because/ it originated on Usenet.
Certainly, Usenet contains a mindboggling level of garbage. It also contains real facts. Material from a group like alt.politics.usa.constitution should be scrutinized much more strictly than that from a group like sci.space.moderated, but in the end, Usenet is just as usable as a source as any Web site, popular magazine, or book from a library.