[WikiEN-l] Age fabrication and original research

[Rob]

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 12:58 PM, Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 12:31 PM, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> If they're available.  But what if they're not?  Is it okay to mention that
> the contradictory information exists?
>
> I doubt you're going to come up with a hard and fast rule which doesn't have
> any unintended consequences.  Ultimately, the fact that "everyone can edit"
> ensures a system of "verifiability, not truth".
>

You're absolutely right, availability is an issue.  But if we have a
hard and fast rule the other way and say sources like the SSDI are
okay, then there's no incentive to look for that secondary source
which does explain the issue.  We might, in rare cases, settle for the
SSDI if absolutely necessary, but not without a reasonable search,
which in this particular case clearly hadn't been done.