[WikiEN-l] primary and secondary sources

Wed Jan 26 22:19:07 UTC 2005

>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>
>Matt Brown said:
>
> >
> > It is definitely the case that we'd rather a bad cite than no cite.
>
>I strongly disagree.  The only cites should be good cites.  Bad ones are
>misleading and wasteful.  A good cite is easy enough to make: one that
>accurately describes the cited material and relates it to the 
>subjectmatter.  This latest fuss was, at bottom, over attempts by some of 
>us to
>transform a bad cite (a statement that a UN source said something that we
>didn't know it said) into a good one (a statement that a secondary source
>gave a figure and attributed it to a UN source).

Um, no.  The cite said exactly that already.  The latest fuss was, at the 
bottom, over attempts to exclude the cite altogether because one editor 
didn't like it.  And even after it was confirmed as factually correct, he 
still made several attempts to exclude it on other grounds.

>The former would have
>misled the reader, the latter would have given the reader more accurate
>information.  As it turned out the cited UN source did not contain the
>information, but another UN source did.

Um, no again.  As it turned out the cited UN source did indeed contain the 
information, but the author of the original source presented it in a 
misleading way, though it made no difference to the article in question, 
since it wasn't used that way in the article.

It's hard to follow exactly what is going on in these debates if you don't 
read the relevant information carefully.

Jay.