[WikiEN-l] Subscription idea

[WJhonson at aol.com]

Jussi, private archives are not "published" and so they fail WP:RS on that  
specific note.
 
Will Johnson
 
 
 
 
In a message dated 12/25/2008 3:34:13 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,  
cimonavaro at gmail.com writes:

Andrew  Gray wrote:
> 2008/12/23 Wilhelm Schnotz  <wilhelm at nixeagle.org>:
>   
>> I hate to pop  into this, but have we thought about the question of
>> reader  access. By this I mean as it currently is with most of our
>>  sources, our readers are able to verify the articles themselves if
>>  they wish to. If we start to use sources that only certain people  can
>> access, that closes off the ability of the average reader to  verify
>> what we write.
>>      
>
> We've discussed this before, in a general case, and pretty  much dismissed 
it.
>
> Limiting ourselves to easily-accessible  sources sounds good in
> practice, but immediately runs into trouble. We  simply can't write
> articles on most of our subjects to a good and  reliable standard
> without relying heavily on access to print books  (which people object
> to because they're offline) or subscription  databases (which people
> object to because they're not accessible to  casual users).
>
> (This should be distinguished from, eg, people  sourcing things to
> private archives; in the former case they're  accessible by anyone who
> goes through the right channels, but in the  latter they may be
> literally inaccessible to anyone  else...)
>
>   

This brings to mind an  interesting case...

About how to source an un-prejudiced article about  the
former Finnish president [[Urho Kaleva Kekkonen]]. A
vastly  controversial figure in Finnish politicians.

The problem of sourcing  stands thus:

While there have been researchers of varying  credibility
writing about Kekkonen (some clearly conspiracy nuts,
others  with a clear wish to create a national mythos around
his persona, with no  problems about letting the mythopoiesis
be transparent, and some serious  seeming researchers), the
big festering problem with "Kekkolology" has been  the
asymmetry of access to primary sources that researchers
have  had.

The researcher Juhani Suomi long held a near solitary
access to  Kekkonens private archives, as he was chosen
by Kekkonens estate holders to  create a "definitive"
biography the statesman. This was vociferously  criticized
by the conspiracy nuts on the other hand, and at least
on the  surface serious people such as his successor
Mauno Koivisto, who wanted in  his own retirement
years write a wider historiography of the era, in  which
both of them operated (him still as a Prime Minister in
the  critical years). The accusations were both about
the inequality of access  to the primary sources, but
also about the fact that Suomi might have been  a partisan
for the cause of the agrarian centrist party Kekkonen  and
Suomi were both aligned with, thus creating a "official"
party  historiography of the man.

This inspires me to check out the talk page  of that
article, to study how wikipedias editors have solved
that knotty  problem.


Yours,

Jussi-Ville  Heiskanen

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l  mailing list
WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this  mailing list,  visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


**************One site keeps you connected to all your email: AOL Mail, 
Gmail, and Yahoo Mail. Try it now. 
(http://www.aol.com/?optin=new-dp&icid=aolcom40vanity&ncid=emlcntaolcom00000025)