[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia as a primary source

[Stan Shebs]

Erik Moeller 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.
For instance, if someone says he's a tenured professor of theology, we 
should just paste it in unquestioningly, right?

:-)

I think it's a valuable lesson in WP policies to ask subjects of 
articles to adhere to the same standards that we supposedly follow for 
everything else. If they object, we can say, "yes we trust you, but are 
you willing to give us your personal phone number and put it in on the 
article's talk page, so editors can call you up at any time, day or 
night, in the future and clarify something?" So far as I know, no one's 
ever signed up to that kind of open-ended commitment.

The idea that anybody famous can call up the WP office and expect 
"harmless corrections" on demand will be very damaging in the long run - 
first it will be subjects of articles, then articles connected to the 
subject of an article, then any article. Note that Edwina Currie's 
criticism wasn't directed at just her own bio, but at related articles, 
so in one breath she's already angling to slant non-biographies.

Just as we need to be known for not allowing corporations to buy slanted 
coverage, we need it to be known that celebrities can't get the slant 
they want just by asking.

Stan