[WikiEN-l] NOR contradicts NPOV

[Carl Beckhorn]

On Tue, Jan 06, 2009 at 08:57:30PM -0500, WJhonson at aol.com wrote:
> I also dispute that many of OUR biographical articles are written 
> entirely from primary sources.  If they are they should be flagged as 
> problematic.

This is partially because the standards we permit for sources on 
biographies of living people are incredibly lax. I view this as an 
unfortunate side effect of the desirable goal of having thorough 
sourcing. 

For examples of the actual sourcing we use for biographies (forget 
about primary/secondary for a moment), scroll through the list of 
references at [[George W. Bush]] or [[Barack Obama]]. In addition
to the majority of references to newspapers and newsmagazines,
I see referneces to MS Encarta and Encyclopedia Britannica.  And these 
are high-profile bios that presumably represent some of our best work in 
sourcing. 

 - Carl