[Foundation-l] LA Times article / Advertising in Wikipedia

Todd Allen toddmallen at gmail.com
Thu Mar 13 11:17:36 UTC 2008


On Thu, Mar 13, 2008 at 3:01 AM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Todd Allen wrote:
>  > "Verifiability, not truth" works fine, even when sources are wrong.
>  >
>  > If you have good reason to believe a source has made an error, tell
>  > them so. If they refuse or fail to correct, tell their rivals.
>  >
>  > One way or the other, corrections will be printed
>  Have you tried that with century-old sources?
>
>  Ec
>
>
>
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With century-old sources, we should be qualifying. "The Source of
Something, written in 1898, stated that...". If no one's written of it
since then, convince someone to. Otherwise, write what sources said,
qualify, and leave the reader to decide. But you're not a reliable
source, not even if you're entirely sure you're right. It's a tough
part of it, even if you're sure you're quite correct, you can't
second-guess a source. But unless another source does so, you can't.
If that bothers you, write something yourself, get it fact-checked or
peer-reviewed and published, and then we've got a newer source with
updated information to use.

-- 
Freedom is the right to say that 2+2=4. From this all else follows.



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