[WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 41, Issue 153

Tue Dec 19 02:02:00 UTC 2006

On 12/18/06, zero 0000 <nought_0000 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Perhaps there is another useful way to look at it: consider
> the legal database to be "the" source, rather than a
> collection of sources.  Can I say something like "Legal
> opinions found in the LawIsUs database uniformly favor Y"?
> (The wording may need tweaking.)
>
The problem is that material we use as sources must be available to
the general public, and it's not clear that we can expect the public
to have access to a legal database. Also, we have to depend on you
having conducted the search correctly, which you may not have done if
you have no legal education; and we have to depend on you correctly
describing the opinion that you say is uniformly favored, which you
may also not have done.

If it's as unusual as you say it is to find no legal opinion against,
then someone else is likely to have written about that, so you can
look for a secondary source and quote it. If no one has written about
it, perhaps it's not so unusual, or perhaps it's of little interest,
or perhaps it's not accurate. It's for these reasons that secondary
sources are preferred to a Wikipedian's interpretation of primary
sources in any area that's disputed.

Sarah