[WikiEN-l] Tabloid sources (was Wikipedia leadership})

[wiki]

On Fri, 4 Feb 2011, Fred Bauder wrote:
> Clearly there are issues. I'm on Jimbo's side with this though. Some of
> my earliest edit wars were over whether The People's Republic of China
> could be described in the introduction as a totalitarian dictatorship.
> What has currently been hit on is "single-party state governed by the
> Communist Party of China (CPC)." with a link to "single-party state" an
> artificial construct for which there is little published authority.
>
> We can't get so picky and bound up in rules that stating the obvious is
> forbidden.

If we are serious about letting the sources dictate the content, and not the
sources justify the content we want, then this comparison does not work.

To have China described as a "totalitarian dictatorship" is in my mind not
neutral, because it is simply to apply populist boo words to something we
don't like. However, be that as it may, it would be reasonable to apply such
a label if it were attributed to a leading Sinologist or some Professor of
International Politics, who is an authority on comparative governmental
systems, it would not be appropriate if it were attributed to
wehatecommmies.com, freechina.org, or Fox News.

To take Jimbo's and Prem Rawat, that's exactly what he did. He used two
evangelical anti-cult exorcists, and a couple of tabloids, and the
circumvention of "popular press" and "anti-cult" attribution, to negatively
label the subject in the most prominent weighted way possible. (And I notice
the edit remains in the article - probably because it appeals to the house
POV). Now, the chap may be a cultist - but my question would be: how are
serious specialist scholars, working in the field, assessing him? And should
that not be given more weight than eccentric critics and non-critical
journalists? 

The sources here are chaff and, even if not excluded, should be weighted as
such.

Scott