[WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

Thu May 5 20:43:07 UTC 2005

slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:

>On 5/5/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>  
>
>>>And that's fine, Mark. But we can't name the people.
>>>      
>>>
>>Why not?  We name a lot of people on Wikipedia.  Basically, anyone who
>>has achieved any sort of notability, whether good or bad.
>>    
>>
>
>Usenet can be used as primary-source material i.e. as a source of
>information about itself. But as soon as we name John Smith (real
>name) who has been called X in a Usenet post, that counts as using
>Usenet as a secondary source. Our policy states that our secondary
>sources must be credible, reputable, and in some way authoritative:
>see, for example, WP:NOR. It's admittedly hard to define these terms,
>but Usenet doesn't count as any of those by any standard, not least
>because the posts are largely anonymous. So even if we think that John
>Smith really is an X, we can't repeat it in Wikipedia until, for
>example, a newspaper repeats the claim. Then we can use it.
>  
>
No, this isn't using a secondary source.  If we are stating the fact 
"[X] has been named 'Kook of the Year' by the UseNet newsgroup 
alt.usenet.kooks", then we're using alt.usenet.kooks as a primary source 
for the award.  If we were saying "[X] *is* a UseNet kook", then we 
would be using it as a secondary source to back up that fact.  But we 
aren't saying anyone is a kook---merely reporting that someone else has 
said so.  In short, the article is about the group and what they've 
said, using their words as a primary source for what they've said.

-Mark