[WikiEN-l] Sourcing "popular culture" items

Thu Nov 9 22:40:17 UTC 2006

Jimmy Wales wrote

> In the meantime, we have an article that is most likely a copyvio, and 
> in any event contains a number of totally unverifiable sources.  And any 
> movement to do something about this sort of nonsense is met with the 
> view that people are out to censor pop culture or something like that.

The further layer of distaste comes from the feeling that proper 'verification' is probably a matter of taking hype as gospel. Rock stars are advised not to take their press releases seriously, as a sanity check. The same for us, I hope.

What is the 'wiki way', here, though? It is certainly not a question of sudden moves. We have always had a way of 'bearing down' on bad material. Probably we do need to look closely, at the specific issue: what is a _reliable source_ here? It has become axiomatic that no reliable sources means no coverage. 

Charles

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