[WikiEN-l] Original research

[slimvirgin at gmail.com]

On 3/24/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> Okay, but imagine you have one blog, which describes said blogger doing
> a, b and c.  Is that permissable?  Because if it is, then it's
> permissable to game Wikipedia, to my mind, in that anything documented
> online is fair game.

A blog is allowed to be used as a source in an article about the
blogger (but not anywhere else), so long as the material used is only
about that blogger and not about third parties; is notable; is not
unduly self-aggrandizing; is not contradicted by third-party sources;
and so long as there's no reasonable doubt about the blogger's
identity. And of course, there must be reliable third-party source
material available about that blogger before a Wikipedia entry would
be justified in the first place.

Those restrictions reduce the extent to which someone can game our
policies by sticking material up on their personal website, then
insisting it be used as a source in Wikipedia.

Sarah