David Gerard wrote:
(I have had to consider this problem with wanting to
write about Australian
'80s indie rock. Trouble is, I'm one of the authoritative sources. Do I
just not write about the stuff I'm the specialist in? Do I write about it
and link to interviews I wrote and published? Should I just put a list of
possible articles and the source I would list as reference and leave others
to maybe write the articles?
I see no problem with published experts writing about their field of
expertise on Wikipedia. It's the sort of thing we should very much
encourage to boost our credibility. They can't use Wikipedia to present
and advance new material that hasn't seen the light of day yet - that
would be original research. But if they rewrite their own information
that has been published elsewhere, that would be fine. It's no different
from what anyone else can do using the same information, but the expert
is particularly well qualified to do so.
The critical thing is that the expert *can and should* cite their own
credible material that has already been published elsewhere. This makes
it verifiable and is a check against original research. In academia, it
might be bad form to cite yourself as a source unnecessarily, or as the
primary evidence for a disputed proposition. But self-citation also
happens legitimately, particularly in under-researched fields where the
available source literature is meager. Also, if some of the work is
effectively primary rather than secondary source material (oral history
being such an example), it could be positively poor scholarship *not* to
cite yourself in such cases.
In this sense the problem is somewhat different from the issue that
occasionally arises when people contribute to articles about themselves
or organizations they participate in. The concern there, I think, is
more about the appearance of impropriety and potential to slant the
content in violation of NPOV. The scenarios do have one thing in common,
though, which is that it can be challenging to distinguish between one's
personal knowledge of the subject and the knowledge that has actually
been disseminated to the public already.
--Michael Snow