Two centuries ago, Jane Austen was popular culture for teenage girls. Four centuries ago, Shakespeare was popular culture.
A lot of scholars today would be happier if their contemporaries had kept better records about either of their lives. When Austen's nephew finally wrote up his recollections, it was with regrets that nobody who knew more was still alive.
-Durova
On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 12:01 PM, Ken Arromdee arromdee@rahul.net wrote:
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.
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