WJhonson(a)aol.com wrote:
Notability can only be determined from reliable
sources.
Websites of local genealogists and local historians are not reliable simply
because they exist.
They're not unreliable either. I prefer to site my sources as precisely
as possible, and trust the reader to decide the reliability of those
sources for himself. Dictating to a reader that only our preferred
sources are reliable is outright arrogance.
That's the point I'm making.
"Official" or not, we have to judge their
reliability based on their own particular authorial prominence. This is
especially true of websites which do not even name the authors of a piece. That
is a very suspect activity in my view.
Why narrow the discussion to websites? The same arguments on both sites
can be applied to printed material. What do you mean by "authorial
prominence"? Failure to name the authors is not fatal. Pseudonymous
and anonymous articles are very common in magazines throughout the lat
three centuries. That is not sufficient reason to jump to the
conclusion that they are unreliable.
Once we can establish that a website does actually
speak not only *with*
authority, but *from* authority, then we could move on to determine if it's
meets the other criteria to be considered reliable.
Speaking from authority imposes a logical fallacy.
Again, that 12 websites mention a purported fact, does
not in and of
itself, make that fact notable. It is only notable when the mentions themselves
are hosted in reliable sources. We discount mentions which are not hosted
in reliable sources.
Of course notability is not a matter of numbers. The obsession of
gutter journalist Nancy Grace on CNN with the child murder of Caley
Anthony and the reporting of such events by other programs does not make
that child notable. Who determines when a source is reliable?
Ec