[WikiEN-l] Notability on the skfields

[Ray Saintonge]

Andrew Gray wrote:

>On 13/05/07, Todd Allen <toddmallen at gmail.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>plenty of people that have gotten in trouble for lying about where they
>>went to school, and a -ton- of people that lie about their age.)
>>    
>>
>The single most common specific OTRS complaint is "please correct my
>date of birth"... I can't offhand think of any who've asked us to
>correct which university they went to - at least, none where it might
>have been wishful puffery. (There have been a couple who wanted us to
>fix  that we had them down as attending a prestigious university they
>didn't, but I don't remember any the other way around)
>
In the absence of credible alternative information, one should begin 
from a position of assuming good faith on the part of these people when 
it comes to basic biographical data.  Sometimes there will be 
controversies, but one should not assume that there is controversy.  
Otherwise reliable sources can make innocent mistakes, and those become 
copied by other reliable sources until the wrong information dominates 
the sources.  By the time the subject notices the source of the original 
error may no longer exist, and nobody can determine where the idea came 
from.

In the extreme case the subject may be willing to fax us documentary 
proof of the facts, but since this is contrary to the claims of an 
overwhelming majority of "reliable" sources we find this proof 
unacceptable.  I really would like to poot in a good word for good 
judgement, and being able to evaluate between some poor sap that's just 
trying to set the record straight and another that's trying to elevate 
his own reputation above reality.  Inevitably, our judgement will be 
wrong about some of them, but probably less often than blind acceptance 
of "reliable" sources.

Ec