[WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

[Michael Snow]

The Cunctator wrote:

> On 11/28/06, Tony Jacobs <gtjacobs at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Of those that were independent, they fell into three classes: some made
>> only
>> a passing mention of GNAA, some were articles where GNAA was only
>> mentioned
>> in the message board responses at the bottom, and those that were 
>> actually
>> *about* GNAA were blogs (there were one or two of those).  We use plenty
>> of
>> internet sources (not the least of which is IMDb, and I've seen 
>> plenty of
>> citations to online mags like Salon and Slate), but blogs have been 
>> deemed
>> below the threshhold.
>
> Which is ridiculous, because blogs are a medium, not a particular source.
> Banning all blogs as sources is absurd. A much better policy, one which
> respects the reader rather than treating him like a child, is to 
> source the
> articles properly. If the source is a blog, the reader can supply his
> judgment in how much credence to give the source. Similarly with say, the
> New York Times, CNN, or the Washington Times, or Pravda.

The reader can only supply judgment about the credibility of a source if 
there is some information upon which to exercise that judgment. The 
reason blogs get singled out as a category is not because they cannot 
ever be useful sources, but because so few of them provide the 
information a reader would need to decide how it stacks up against other 
sources. (I assume that the reader won't make the decision based on the 
fact that it's a blog, since as you rightly point out, that's only a 
label for the medium in general.)

For example, the existence of independent sources is essential, both to 
maintain a neutral presentation and to avoid gullibly repeating 
falsehoods. But when you have a blog of unknown provenance, it's 
impossible to know whether it qualifies as independent (Wal-Mart Across 
America, anyone?). At some point, editorial judgment requires that 
certain material should be rejected when offered as a source, and if 
that's all the material available on a particular subject, then we have 
to decline to write about it.

--Michael Snow