No subject

reliable sources that conflict, is fine. Books state X, official government
records state Y, both are "RS" enough to be worth citing and the difference
is probably worth noting in the context of her article as well.

So state the facts. It's fine to say "source X states Y and source P states
Q" or the like.

Where it becomes OR is if you then start to draw your own conclusions from
it, which one is "right", etc, if you don't have a good basis to do so.

FT2



On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 2:22 AM, FT2 <ft2.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:

> We're an encyclopedia. Often sources conflict. If so, mention what both
> sources say. An example where this has happened in another article is here:
>
> <
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_Parliamentary_expenses_scandal#Source_of_information
> >
>
> See last para of that section. May help you. Another is here, where there
> is some genuine historical uncertainty to whether the matter existed or not:
>
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalin's_speech_on_August_19,_1939>
>
> Between those two, you should get some good ideas.
>
> FT2
>
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 12:43 AM, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> This may have come up before so if there's a previous discussion on en
>> or here, please direct me to it.
>>
>> Do we have an official stance on using primary sources like the US
>> census and the Social Security Death Index to prove a case of [[age
>> fabrication]]?  My take on it is that it is prohibited original
>> research, using primary sources to disprove secondary ones, compounded
>> by the fact that we could easily confuse the subject of the article
>> with another person of the same or similar name.
>>
>> If you want to be specific, here it is:  Every published source has a
>> birthdate of 1918 for the late psychic Jeane Dixon.  However the SSDI
>> has her birthdate as 1904 and the brother-in-law of her nephew swears
>> on the talk page that the 1904 date is the correct one.  I think the
>> 1904 is correct, and it's frustrating because likely no journalist or
>> historian is going to bother publishing something about such a minor
>> matter, but my opinion is irrelevant and we should defer to published
>> sources.  Verifiability not truth and all that.  Or should we IAR in
>> cases like this and go with the "correct" date?
>>
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>
>