[WikiEN-l] Archives as sources proposal

Fri Apr 14 20:14:10 UTC 2006

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Guettarda stated for the record:

> In the case of a discrepancy between what you can find for yourself and what
> the article says - I suppose the place to start is with {{fact}} or
> something stronger.  Obviously, if you have found the marriage certificate,
> why haven't other people?  Or is it that they just aren't famous enough to
> have a real biographer?  I'd say it is problematic.  Personally I wouldn't
> think twice about trusting Sean's veracity - but the truth is, we don't have
> "trusted editors" and in theory, what stands for Sean should stand for any
> anon.

Thank you for the complement, but I would never expect anyone to simply
take anyone else's word for any source.  In this situation, I would post
a scanned copy of the certificate and detailed information about where
to see the original.

I maintain that mere difficulty of access should not be a criterion in
evaluating sources.  If a source /can/ be obtained by any editor, be it
by Google, by using the public library, by snail-mail, or by traveling
by camel to Samarkand, then it is a valid source, IMAO.  In contrast,
many of us have access to material that cannot be verified by those
outside our professions.  There is, for example, quite a lot of
perfectly innocuous, unclassified, public domain data that only people
with .mil e-mail addresses would be able to verify.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | All I ask is the chance to prove
 sean at epoptic.org | that money can't make me happy.
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