"Fastfission" wrote
This kind of stuff is actually a big concern within studies about the writing of history (historiography) and the philosophy and sociology of science -- what kinds of sources become part of "the archive", what sorts of systemic biases are imposed by certain "standards of rigor", how demarcation boundaries are really ways of imposing certain "regimes of truth", and so forth.
I made this sort of point a while back. Yes, there's a tension between being hardcore about verifiability, and the wish to eliminate systemic bias. I would rather reach out, try to fix up the systemic issues, and fuss about sources later. I'm not exactly happy about the subtexts, like 'verifiability means anglophone sources', which do come up (e.g. the Rajput case on the ArbCom).
We still need 'be bold!', in fact. Consider that there are legal problems; but that they are likely to come from the rich. We should certainly be tougher on articles about living Americans than for living Liberians, for example.
Charles