[WikiEN-l] Another sourcing problem

[Charles Matthews]

Ken Arromdee wrote:
> 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.
>   
My experience on working on BLPs exactly contradicts that. You find 
postings to BLPs often consist of "well-known" "facts" that have been 
publicised using the Web, but are positive PR or attack material 
designed to harass, and not reliably sourced at any point in their 
life-cycle, though there will be "insiders" who know the truth of it all.
> 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.)
>   
Correct, in the sense that the assertion "this is true because I know it 
to be" appeals to authority. That the policy is not working out as 
intended is what is required to prove here.
> 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".
>   
You are shifting ground there, of course. It is true that in a sense we 
have subordinated NPOV to RS, by saying we are not going to allow vague 
assertions that there is more than one side to a story, only things we 
can verify.

Charles