[WikiEN-l] "Reliable sources" guideline being treated as absolute policy

Thu Nov 30 22:55:43 UTC 2006

On 01/12/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Nov 2006 19:04:27 -0700, Bryan Derksen
> <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
> >> Indeed.  Absence of any claim to validity is what is at issue, and the
> >> absence of any sources is one of the diagnostic factors.  very few
> >> sourced articles are flagged for A7.
>
> >But even then it's still not not a remotely _reliable_ diagnostic
> >factor. For example, if there were an article whose text consisted of:
> >"Marty McFoo was a German actor who won several national awards for his
> >portrayal of Julius Caesar on TV."
> >This article would be completely unreferenced, but nevertheless it
> >asserts the subject's notability just fine.
>
> This is arse about face though. Marty McFoo is an actor who has played
> in some things[reliable source] which have been popular[reliable
> source] is unlikely to be tagged, whereas with no reliable sources it
> might well be (we have any number of deletion candidates which make
> vague unsubstantiated assertions, after all).
>

Of course we now get so far into wiki-lawyering that we have to
explicitly say that things are "popular" enough to get into the
"popularity" based wikipedia.

Peter Ansell