[WikiEN-l] Using social networking sites as sources

[Stephen Bain]

On 8/22/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> This may be of interest to some people, given our occasional habit of
> fleshing out articles by raiding the personal sites of subjects:
>
> http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003211808_fancher20.html
>
> It's a brief report of a discussion at the Seattle Times about the
> reliability and ethical appropriateness of using (say) the Myspace
> page of a murder victim in reporting on them. Not much content, but
> it's good to see people are asking themselves these questions.

Interesting both in terms of the tendency to use such sites as
sources, and for the brief discussion on the ethics of using certain
types of information (even when publicly available) towards the end.

The thirteen questions (questions, not answers) posed there, or some
equivalent, should be in the minds of all those working on biographies
on Wikipedia, where there is sometimes a tendency to forget that we
are writing an encyclopaedia, and not a mere collection of
information.

-- 
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com