[WikiEN-l] The new verifiability policy

[Steve Block]

Steve Bennett wrote:
> I've been trying to get my head around why we even have a rule about
> what an acceptable source is. 

I think it was developed with articles on scientific subjects in mind, 
rather than cultural ones.  I suppose it depends where you sit on 
pseudoscience.  Should people be able to assert that levitation exists, 
or that the grand theory of everything is y=2+b, stuff like that.  When 
we move into cultural and historical topics I think there is certainly a 
case for relaxing the sourcing requirements somewhat.  But I do think 
there should be standards, but they have to be contextualised by the 
information that is being sourced:  it seems reasonable to source 
opinion and commentary from blogs, history should be sourcable by 
building a narrative from a chain of events, but scientific theory 
should be sourced from peer reviewed journals, that sort of thing.

I guess there's also issue with the denouncing of sources.  For example, 
the recent afd over Neglected Mario Characters webcomic hinged on the 
claim for notability, namely for being potentially the first sprite web 
comic.  Research was performed using the Internet Archive, and that was 
challenged as original research.  To my mind the source should have been 
challenged, since the archive is not complete and may miss stuff, but 
that shouldn't preclude using the information sourced; rather we should 
note that fact in the citation.

Steve block


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