[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia as a primary source

[Steve Bennett]

On 3/14/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> It is increasingly common that subjects of articles wish to interact
> directly with us and tell us that their article is wrong in some way.
> It is, in my opinion, silly for us to reject even harmless corrections
> on the grounds that they cannot be traced to a reliable source. If

It's also silly for us to object to Joe Smith fixing his birthday on
[[Joe Smith]] while simultaneously complaining that people don't seem
to realise that people can edit the encyclopaedia themselves. See the
other topic, about the history tab and the edit button being
invisible.


> Wikipedia itself becomes a primary source in the process of someone
> commenting on "their" article, what is the problem with that from a
> purely factual point of view? Depending on the nature of the
> statement, such comments could be either incorporated as corrections
> (date of birth) or attributed statements (".. denies that he ever had
> sexual relations with that woman").

You mean, if Joe Smith deletes "was seeing Jane Bloggs" from his
article, we can then add "Joe Smith denies being in a relationship
with Jane Bloggs" with a link to the diff as the citation for the
denial? How pervertedly weirdly plausible.

> ...). No, just like any credentials verification, WMF shouldn't be
> involved directly. But while I generally fully support the need for
> good sourcing in any article, I often find it absurd how people who
> point out simple corrections are treated.

Simple corrections from the source itself should just be accepted.
Anything vaguely controversial we should ask for something on their
website we can link to. Ie, if we have a semi-reliable source saying
someone was in the IRA, and they privately claim they weren't, we
should at least ask to see a public declaration that they weren't.
Then we can publish as "The Camden local paper says that he was in the
IRA<ref.../>, a claim which he denies strongly<ref.../>

Steve