[WikiEN-l] Proposal: limited extension of semi-protection

Andrew Gray shimgray at gmail.com
Sat May 27 00:06:04 UTC 2006


On 27/05/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:

> > Ranting criticisms on blogs certainly constitute verification for
> > writing "It has been claimed he eats babies". They do not constitute
> > verification for "He eats babies".
> >
> Not according to [[wp:V]] they don't.  "Anyone can create a website or
> pay to have a book published, and then claim to be an expert in a
> certain field. For that reason, self-published books, personal
> websites, and blogs are largely not acceptable as sources."
>
> I've always taken "verifiability" to mean verifiable *in a reputable
> source*.  Some people disagree, of course (apparently you're one of
> them), but I wasn't aware that Jimmy Wales was one of them.

However, the existence of that blog is a valid source that "X has a
blog called Y". I think we're talking a bit at cross purposes here,
since I certainly agree with the unspoken "reputable". The existence
of something, and it being accessible to all, is grounds to verify its
*existence* - if for some reason our normal editorial processes feel
we should mention the cranky blog exists, then we can point to it
without worrying that we need to find a footnote in a newspaper
mentioning the URL. We don't need to refer to a secondary source which
says "X exists and writes about Y" in order to say that, yes, X
exists, and has an article on Y.

Verifiability of existence of a statement and verifiability of
validity of a statement are different but slightly intertwined
concepts. We can't write "John Smith eats babies (see
smith-baby-killer.blogspot.com)" - we can't verify the existence of
the fact - but we can write "It has been claimed by [some member of
the lunatic fringe] that John Smith eats babies (see etc.)" - we can
verify the existence of the claim.

Of course, this is all essentially moot - whilst we can say that the
"claim of a claim" is verifiable, we do have a vast community reserve
of editorial discretion, good taste and common sense to draw on. And
with those, we can say "yes, I suppose you could legitimately say that
so-and-so thinks such-and-such. But writing that here is not
appropriate for our article, so bugger off".

The more of that I see the happier I am. (I removed a bit of
gratuitous nudity from an article yesterday; it was exceptionally
tasteless in context. It's cheering that no-one has yet accused me of
being a crazed censor...)

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk



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