[WikiEN-l] Notability in Wikipedia

[Ray Saintonge]

WJhonson at aol.com wrote:
> Notability can only be determined from reliable sources.
> Websites of local genealogists and local historians are not reliable simply 
>  because they exist.
>   

They're not unreliable either.  I prefer to site my sources as precisely 
as possible, and trust the reader to decide the reliability of those 
sources for himself.  Dictating to a reader that only our preferred 
sources are reliable is outright arrogance.

> That's the point I'm making. "Official" or not, we have to judge their  
> reliability based on their own particular authorial prominence.  This is  
> especially true of websites which do not even name the authors of a piece.   That 
> is a very suspect activity in my view.
>   

Why narrow the discussion to websites?  The same arguments on both sites 
can be applied to printed material. What do you mean by "authorial 
prominence"?  Failure to name the authors is not fatal.  Pseudonymous 
and anonymous articles are very common in magazines throughout the lat 
three centuries.  That is not sufficient reason to jump to the 
conclusion that they are unreliable.

> Once we can establish that a website does actually speak not only *with*  
> authority, but *from* authority, then we could move on to determine if it's  
> meets the other criteria to be considered reliable.
>   

Speaking from authority imposes a logical fallacy.
> Again, that 12 websites mention a purported fact, does not in and of  
> itself, make that fact notable.  It is only notable when the mentions  themselves 
> are hosted in reliable sources.  We discount mentions which are  not hosted 
> in reliable sources.
>   

Of course notability is not a matter of numbers.  The obsession of 
gutter journalist Nancy Grace on CNN with the child murder of Caley 
Anthony and the reporting of such events by other programs does not make 
that child notable.  Who determines when a source is reliable?

Ec