[WikiEN-l] Original research

[slimvirgin at gmail.com]

On 3/26/06, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > No, of course personal communications are not valid to cite.  You can
> > cite reliable published sources.
>
> When they exist, yes. But that is not always the case. Sometimes one must rely on what reputable
> people say vs what they write. I've cited professors whose classes I've taken. Is that wrong?
>
Hi Daniel, all our sources must be published in some form. If your
professors have published the same material in a book or paper, we can
use that, but not if they simply say it in a classroom situation. The
key to whether a source is citable on Wikipedia is (a) whether it's in
the public domain, and (b) whether there's some form of third-party
editorial oversight, no matter how minimal, as there is when an editor
goes through a book prior to publication, or when a newspaper copy
editor checks a news story for factual errors or legal problems. In
the case of a professor giving a lecture, the quality of the material
is the same as in a self-published book or personal website, where
there are no third-party checks. Self-published material is only
allowed to be used in articles about the professor himself, and only
if he is speaking about himself and not about any third party. There
are exceptions if the professor is well known, but even then the
self-published material must be in the public domain. It can't be an
oral communication, because then readers have no way of checking that
you've communicated it accurately, or that the professor stands by
what he said. See [[WP:V]] and [[WP:RS]].

Sarah