[WikiEN-l] Interesting debate over reliable sources

[Sarah]

On 7/9/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> I always find it mildly amusing -- and disturbing -- how conservative
> and, dare I say it, naive Wikipedia can be when it comes to comparing
> old media with the Internet. Every printed source is held up as a
> symbol of journalistic integrity, and a guy in Ohio hacking up a
> moderate article about some website 2 hours before the deadline is
> considered, per WP:WEB, to make the thing more notable than a hundred
> blogs with thousands of readers, because he's a "reliable source."

Erik, the important point about newspapers is that all but the tiniest
have processes in place to detect errors, and particularly legal
problems, prior to publication. We can only hope they use the
processes correctly; if they don't, that's not our fault. But
Wikipedia has no such process, which is why we rely on what we call
"reliable sources" who do.

Sarah