[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Leadership (was NY Times article on gender gap in Wikipedia contributors}

[wiki]

"I'm sorry, but if I see somebody starting to source information from 
such tabloids you mentioned, especially information on biographies of 
living people regarding stuff that is not confirmed, there are going to 
be problems with me."-MuZemike

All well in theory, but have you looked? The Daily Mail, Sun and various
other tabloids are regularly used as sources on BLPs. The typical way of
getting round the reliability issue will be to use phrases likes "it was
reported in the popular press that...", on the pretext that that anything
tabloids report is notable by virtue of being reported in popular newspapers
(regardless of whether the source is reliable or not wrt the facts). After
all: "surely that The Sun has said x is notable, and The Sun is a reliable
source regarding what The Sun has said." :( 

As has been said, Wikipedia has yet to define what it means by "reliable
source", and "notable source" is very easily substituted as a metric, with
the small safeguard of attribution (sometimes).  

Scott