[WikiEN-l] Interesting debate over reliable sources

[Fastfission]

On 7/9/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> I'm not sure if this is a retaliatory effort for the deletion of some
> meme or not, but there is a deletion debate on both Lumber Cartel and
> There Is No Cabal, based on the assertion that the cited sources for
> these Usenet phenomena, being themselves on Usenet, are not reliable.
> We have some references from Eric Raymond which to my mind amount to
> reliable sources, but it's an interesting point.

It would seem to me that Usenet sources should ONLY be cited in the
case of Usenet phenomena (ditto with blogs, etc.), and that the
prohibition should be on citing them for anything BUT Usenet
phenomena.

So you could use a Usenet source to report on something that happened
on Usenet, or a blog source to report on something which happened on a
blog. But you couldn't use them for anything else.

As for the question of why something printed "on paper" becomes
authoritative, there are two obvious answers to this:
1. it is a holdout from an age which is quickly passing us by. As
newsjournalists well know, the monopoly of the mainstream media over
mass information has been attacked by electronic sources for some time
now, and blogs and wikis and the like have been dramatically changing
the relationship between journalism and "the readers." But three
hundred years of print journalism monopoly over information still has
some clout for most people, and the truth status of blogs et al is
still viewed with some suspicion.*
2. being printed by a respected newspaper means that at the very least
the newspaper has put their own capital and respect on the line for a
story. This of course does not guarantee truth *in the slightest* but
does get closer to accountability of information than you have
elsewhere on the internet (where there is generally no real
accountability).

FF

*As it should be. The problem is not that people view blogs and wikis
with suspicion, but that they do not view all journalism with
suspicion. I think Wikipedia has actually worked wonders in this
department: it trying to assess the accuracy of WP, it has become very
clear and widely publicized that though it is often inaccurate, it is
not usually any MORE inaccurate than mainstream sources.