[WikiEN-l] Arbitration Committee Seeking Comment

Mon Jun 6 17:49:24 UTC 2005

On 6/6/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> Fred Bauder stated for the record:
> > There is also the question of whether it is  reasonably convenient
> > to access it. For example, a NYT's article  might cost 2 bucks but
> > something that requires accessing Nexus or  consulting an obscure
> > journal is much more expensive.
> 
> So material from an "obscure" journal is less acceptable?  I guess my
> digging into old Soviet naval records for information about their
> nuclear submarines is a waste of time.
> 
> The harder the original editor worked, the more likely his work will be
> deleted.  That's ... I'm groping for the word ... smart? ... no ... oh,
> I have it: perverse.

I agree, that is a foolish metric.

Now, if we have two equal sources (that is, roughly equal reliability
and authority) for the same information we should choose the one which
is more widely available (and of course, cost is a factor there).

This is like the pruning I do on external links... sometimes I find
places where someone has taken free content (Linux documentation
project materials, for example), and place it on their blog or a site
laden with advertising then linked it from Wikipedia.  When I
encounter those I change the link to point to the more authoritative
source.

This should not dissuade us from using a very expensive, very rare
source, or even an advertising laden websource, if that is what is
available for the information. That someone can verify its
authenticity and authortativeness is the bar we impose.

That said, it would be a shame if we wrote articles with only very
expensive sources, but I don't think we are running any risk of that.
:)