[WikiEN-l] Another sourcing problem

[Ken Arromdee]

On Thu, 15 Jul 2010, Charles Matthews wrote:
> Why is this any different from any other kind of "arcana"? And do people
> really lose sleep over this sort of thing? There must be a huge amount
> of insider-like knowledge associated with politics, sport, business,
> whatever. If we wait until this becomes "information" - is documented in
> at least some literature about the area - that should be fine. Most
> specialist areas have at least a magazine. I don't think simply
> multiplying instances where at the margin the content policy works as it
> is intended to by itself undermines its purpose.

The Internet is available to hundreds of millions people.  I think that
disqualifies anything on it from being insider information.

And the policy isn't working as it's intended to.  The reliable sources rule
isn't supposed to rule out arcana.  We have rules that are actually about
arcana to handle that.  (Though I'm not sure exactly what the reliable sources
rule is for.  It's not, of course, about truth.)

And even this excuse doesn't work for the Bradley example.  Having only one
side of a dispute because one side of the dispute is a published author and
can more easily get her side published in a reliable source certainly isn't
"arcana".