[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia as a primary source

[Anthony]

On 3/13/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> I really don't see anything wrong with me footnoting a) as "was born
> in Such-and-Such<ref>Personal correspondence with the Wikimedia
> Foundation, June 17th, reference ABC1234567</ref>.

I disagree.  There are lots of problems with this.  1) You're not the
Wikimedia Foundation; 2) It's not a published source which can be
easily accessed; and 3) it's not a reliable source even if it's true,
as the person no doubt does not remember his own birth.

> Yes, we could ask
> them to issue a rather dull press release, or write a blog post, or
> (in one case I recall) update the details on their myspace page. But
> no reasonable academic or reporter objects to incorporating
> corrections of trivial, non-contentious details from those who know
> about the article; why should we?
>
Because we want to be better?  If the detail is so trivial as to not
matter if it's correct or not, why include it in the first place?
Alternatively, if the truth might actually matter, then we should make
sure to get it right.