[WikiEN-l] Notability in Wikipedia

[wjhonson at aol.com]

<<-----Original Message-----
From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 2:53 pm
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Notability in Wikipedia


We mostly don't know, and mostly have no way of knowing, whether the
publishers of 19th century magazines checked their facts.  "Gentleman's
Magazine" (published 1731-1907) was highly regarded for the information
it provided, but I have no way to measure the amount of fact-checking
that it did.>>

In general, for works of this age and presence, we can apply the 
"venerable source" approach, taking it for its word, and applying 
corrections when they exist.  CP for example has a corrections volume 
(volume 14) and so corrections do exist.

Things like NEGHR and CTeG tend to get corrections made in later 
editions or cross-posted to other Gen/History journals.

The main problematic sources are not the ones from the 19th century, 
but rather the pseudo-historical ones that are being spewed out like 
.... spew, right now.  I picked up a copy of Laurence Gardiner's book 
"Bloodline of the Holy Grail" for a buck, not because I think it has 
any substantive worth whatsoever (which it does not), but because I 
wanted to track down what his sources were for his absurdly fantastic 
genealogical charts.

My "absurdly fantastic" I mean "wholely lacking in evidence and in some 
cases utterly preposterous to boot".

On nearly every page of this "work", I find statements that are 
ridiculous and mostly uncited.  But at least it has led me to cite some 
of my own work more rigorously and to be surprised by reading the 
fictional "Book of Jubilees" that someone has made up names for all the 
wives of Noah's ancestors.

For that it's worth a buck I suppose.  But it's not a reliable source.  
For anything.  Except perhaps to cite the complete fictional line of 
"Prince Michael of Albany", since he wrote the foreword.

Will Johnson