[WikiEN-l] What's wrong with a dodgy source, properly identified?

Sun May 8 10:55:23 UTC 2005

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dpbsmith at verizon.net wrote:
> I don't get it. Journalism follows one practice, academic research
> another. I think Wikipedia follows a modified version of latter.
> 
> In journalism, stories are published with no indication of the source
> other than the reporter's name (or the name of the wire service).
> _Sources are not cited_. We rely on the newspaper's editorial staff, the
> newspaper's reputation, and the reporter's responsibility to the
> profession of journalism to follow appropriate standards to insure that
> most of what we read is true. We usually have no way of directly
> evaluating what's behind any story.
> 

And that it why you shouldn't trust them :)

> In academic research, every source is cited in a way that allows the
> reader to verify it personally. Every fact that appears in a paper is
> either the personal testimony of the author of the paper, we did thus
> and such, we saw thus and such, we concluded thus and such. _Or, it is a
> source citation._ These source citations are usually journal references,
> but may occasionally be "personal communications." The journals and
> sources are simply _named._ Sez who? Sez Frotz and Glotz 1989,
> Zeitschrift für Krankschaft und Geerschift, 22(6):116-122. In most cases
> the reader can easily verify that the Zeitschrift exists and that pages
> 116-122 of that number have that article and that it says what the
> paper's author says it says.
> 

Yes, that it good...

> _It is left completely up to the reader to know whether or not the
> Zeitschrift is a peer reviewed journal or not, what its reputation is,
> and whether Frotz and Glotz are competent_.
> 

That will depend on where you read what Frotz and Glotz have written. If
it is a peer-reviewed journal, book etc. the editors /should/ have
checked all that.

> I completely fail to see _any problem in general_ in citing USENET as a
> source, provided an actual citation is given so the reader can verify
> that the posting says what the article says it says.
> 

Neither do I. If we have an article saying "Linus talked to Fred", and
we got that off USENET, it is OK. It is a *fact* that a person called
Linus posted something to Fred via USENET.

> That does not mean that a statement citing USENET should necessarily go
> in an article, or that citing USENET, or The New York Times, or
> _Nature_, waves a magic wand over a passage that protects it from
> criticism, discussion, replacement, or deletion.
> 

But if the article is about USENET, we take USENET as the source... if
the article is about NYT, take NYT as a source... if the article is
about /Nature/, take /Nature/ as a source. USENET is possibly more
reliable in this sense because the archives are obtainable so easily. To
check a fact in a NYT article, I need to travel 30km to a library, see
if they have the relevant edition, and then use a microfiche/film reader
to see it. *Perhaps* the library has a hard copy, or the content is
available online, but I don't know for certain. USENET is *more*
reliable in this case.

> A good example of what I think to be an entirely appropriate use of
> USENET is in tracking the approximate time when phrases or neologisms or
> memes became current in the Internet community.
> 

Up until 1994, yes.

> Conversely, The Boston Globe might carry a story quoting sources
> criticizing a judge. That would be a very reliable source. That does NOT
> mean that it would automatically be appropriate for a Wikipedia article
> to say ANY of these things:
> 

You trust what commercial newspapers (or any commercial new sources)
say? I don't.

> *Judge so-and-so lacks proper judicial demeanor.
> 
> *Judge so-and-so was criticized for lacking proper judicial demeanor.
> 
> *On day so-and-so, page so-and-so, the Boston Globe quoted so-and-so as
> saying Judge so-and-so is "a very passionate woman, and is not afraid to
> go and dance and have a couple of glasses of wine and have a good time.
> She's not your typical judge."
> 
> The third form is a valid citation, but may or may not be appropriate to
> the context of an article.
> 

That would be removed for being dodgy english, not a defamatory
statement. If we said "USA Today published claims that Judge so-and-so
was a dirty scoundrel", *and* it was relevant, I think it could stay in.
Remember, Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia, not a lonely housewifes
ramblings on the world. NPOV means facts, which are axiomatically
neutral, not opinions, which are axiomatically biased.

- --
Alphax
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
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