[WikiEN-l] Notability in Wikipedia

[Ray Saintonge]

WJhonson at aol.com wrote:
> doc.wikipedia at ntlworld.com writes:
>
> A church  website, if it is obviously aimed at PR 
> and full of blurb,  should  have claims of membership and influence taken 
> with a pinch of salt.  However, a page on a small church which narrates 
> that it was built in  1791, built of sandstone, and has a clock tower of 
> gothic style dating  from 1806 built by village subscription to celebrate 
> Trafalgar, and that  six generations of the family of the Lord of Boggle, 
> is hardly likely to  be lying. And if the same information can be 
> verified for the website of  the county historical society, then common 
> sense says we have  enough.>>
> ------------------
> Historical Society websites are not reliable sources.
> For the most part they consist of segments written by amateur historians  
> and amateur genealogists.
>  
> I started the Local History Project, and not even I would consider a site  
> like that reliable and citable.
>  
> IF one of those authors has been previously published by a third-party  
> publisher (who does fact-checking), then it might be considered a reliable  
> source.  But not until then.


One fact is that local histories are seldom written by people who live 
far away from the community in question.  Most are indeed written by 
amateurs, and they often draw unsophisticated and unwarranted 
conclusions. I've seen awful work done by professionals too, so I'm not 
about to abandon my judgement when I see academic or professional titles 
attached to somebody's name.

Reliability depends just as much on context as anything else.

Ec