On 27/05/06, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@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...)