On 12/8/06, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
For an edit to be verifiable it has to be verifiable by someone other than the person that made the edit. We're not talking about reliability of sources - it's obvious that a TV show is a perfectly reliable primary source - we're talking about whether someone else can come along and check that what the original editor said is true (assuming the source is right - a wikipedia article can never be more reliable than the sources it uses). It's not necessary that everyone be able to verify it, but a reasonable number of reasonably unconnected people should be able to, otherwise we're open to any number of hoaxes.
In fact, the policy is even stronger. [[Wikipedia:Verifiability]] says:
""Verifiable" in this context means that ***any reader*** should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source." (emphasis mine)
I'm not sure if I agree with that policy, but that's what the policy says.
I'm sure I don't agree with it. I worked on the verifiability policy a while ago to get it to a rational place. Clearly *any reader* can't check every source used on Wikipedia -- some people just don't have access to the Widener Library, for example, or read French.
"Any reader" cannot verify that Cmdr. Pickett gets eaten by a Florgbernian
Rumpox in Stargate episode 23 if said Stargate episode isn't publicly available for viewing.
We had been talking about commercially available, not publicly available. Those are two different things.