On 3/3/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/4/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
Just so you know, I'm an editor that thinks taht weblogs and web forums are acceptable sources.
I think providing a source is a lot more important than trying to ensure its reliability--let the reader provide their own determination of the weight to give to the source.
I trust readers more than I trust journalists, frankly.
That's an excellent point. Since we're providing the source, and since weblogs are typically easily accessible, doesn't a rule against weblogs fly in the face of "Wikipedia does not strive for truth, but verifiability"? Sure, if you had even better sources, you might not want to clog your article up with stuff drawn from weblogs...but if you're directly quoting from a blog, where's the problem?
The problem is something of a slippery slope one -- i.e. whereas newspapers etc. are extremely controlled, blogs are extremely uncontrolled, and both lack for accountability and reliability for different reasons. But at least we have a historical understanding of the fallibility of traditional media, and fewer people understand the strengths and weaknesses of blogs/websites/electronic-only media.
But a lot of the bias against blogs is, in my opinion, simply the classic problem of trying to make Wikipedia resemble traditional encyclopedias. People forget that Wiki is not paper.