On 10/08/2011 16:40, Ken Arromdee wrote: > On Tue, 9 Aug 2011, Carcharoth wrote: >> My rule of thumb for self-published sources is to see if they cite >> their sources. If they do, then you can check what they say. If they >> don't, then you can't, and that can be a problem even with so-called >> 'reliable' sources. > This fails to be a useful method when the self-published source is the > personal > experience of a professional in the industry. > > This happens a lot with Internet publications, such as J. Michael > Straczynski's postings in the Babylon 5 newsgroup, or Jim Shooter's blog > (jimshooter.com). > > The standard Wikipedian's response to this quandry is "well, if they can't > get a reliable source to quote them, it must not be that important in the > first > place", which ignores the realities of the modern Internet. > The standard Wikipedian's response to the standard Wikipedian's response is that we have IAR for particular exceptions to a "rule of thumb". The standard response to that is that the "community" has shown a drift over time from people who like rules-of-thumb and IAR, to people who like rules, period. The standard response to that is WP:CREEP. The standard response to the comment that nobody reads what WP:CREEP says about "Editors don't believe that nobody reads the directions" is that ... hey, there is a thing called the "human condition" and we somewhat have to live with it. [[Wabi-sabi#Western_use]] got there before WP was thought of, but it of course now sounds very old-school. Though the insight that trying to legislate perfection into what we do is rather foolish is worth saying occasionally, even if it is wasted on fanatics for the MoS and inline verification-ultras. Hey, I can now slip in my view that we need to look again at "barriers to entry" in general, not just as special pleading for Babylon 5 fans.
Charles _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
