[WikiEN-l] Deletions - do we cut a bit of slack for the Third World

[Ray Saintonge]

Ken Arromdee wrote:

>On Fri, 16 Feb 2007, Brian Salter-Duke wrote:
>  
>
>>Should we, as I suggest there, cut a bit of slack for artciles about
>>something in the Third World, or do we just accept the "no reliable
>>third party sources for notability" mantra.
>>    
>>
>This is a special case of a fundamental problem with Wikipedia: the demand
>for sources and notability produces a heavy bias towards things which are on
>the Internet and can be easily found.
>
>I'd say to accept it, but I'm hard pressed to find a reason to do so other
>than IAR.  (Which proves that IAR can apply to *anything*...  how many of
>you thought there would ever be a case where it needs to be used to ignore
>notability?)
>
I support "Ignore All Rules", but I don't see that as being applicable 
here.  It looks too much like the easy way out.  One does not deal wih a 
fundamental problem by ignoring it.

I agree with the importance of sources, but if we truly want this to be 
a project for the world we need to avoid imposing western 
Aristotelianism in places where it was not the cultural norm.  That 
would just be another form of imperialism that we made ourselves believe 
was gone when Europe's former colonies became independant.

We do Wikipedia a disservice when we insist on a rigorous interpretation 
of reliability.  Sources allow us to trace the origins of concepts that 
are expressed in an article; having them implies nothing about the 
validity of the concept. There is certainly no necessity that a source 
be on the internet, and some benefit might be derived from insisting on 
at least one source that is not from the internet.  There is certainly 
no necessity that a source even be in English (or whatever other 
language is used in the Wikipedia inquestion); somebody who understands 
the source language can always translate it later.

Ec