[WikiEN-l] MUD history dissolving into the waters of time

[Ken Arromdee]

On Sat, 10 Jan 2009, toddmallen wrote:
> There is no question as to his expertise. The question is "Was his
> expertise important enough that someone who's -not him- fact checked
> and published what he had to say on this matter?" The answer appears
> to be "no". Self-published sources, even by experts, are not
> particularly reliable, nor do they in any way establish notability.

We're not going to start deleting our article about the Simpsons.

But we both know very well that sources about the Simpsons aren't going to
be fact-checked.  Sources about any sort of popular culture topic generally
aren't fact-checked.  If you publish a book about the Simpsons, the publisher
won't go through and verify that your statement about the first appearance
of Krusty the Clown is correct.  There may be an occasional professional
journal with a Simpsons article that is fact-checked, but most of our
information in Simpsons articles won't be from sources like that.

The idea that using a non-self-published source means it's fact-checked just
isn't *true*, unless you're talking about some kind of technical or scientific
topic, which this isn't.