User talk:Ta bu shi da yu/Sources

In some order

1. Laws and legislative proceedings
2. Judicial procedings
3. Peer reviewed journal articles
4. Academic Papers
5. Academic Books
6. Academic Journals
7. Journals
8. Books
9. Paper dictionaries
10. Maps/atlases
11. Signage posted by road departments and other public entities
12. Photos (including aerial photos)
13. Paper encyclopedias
14. Interviews
15. Newspapers
16. Press releases
17. Think tank publications (due to biases and unknown backers)
18. Corporate webpages
19. Fictional books
20. Signage posted by businesses and other private entities
21. Religious texts
22. Blogs

Some sources may or may not be reliable, depending on what we write about:

1. Fan pages (including serious subjects like roads and rails). About topics it relates to, it might be very relevant. For instance, comics. Fansites might be very important.
2. Usenet postings (depends on what it is and where it comes from. Torvalds vs. Tanenbaum is good for that article. Bad for an article about Microkernel vs Monolithic kernel.

add more

What makes a reputable source?

Some sources are seen as more reputable than others. For instance, I personally don't take Alexander Hislop's text to be reliable. Others don't find blogs reliable. Newspapers can be seen as less reliable than peer reviewed articles. Even these have issues (see Sokal affair).

A source can be seen as more reliable if it is not subject to change as much. A little ironic considering what I'm posting to. That's a side point. A blog may not be considered as reliable or reputable because it can change very quickly and with no notice. Printed medium is seen as more reliable because then everyone knows what was written and the only way of changing what is written is by destroying the source and then reprinting it. In this case, "reliablity" is really the unchanging nature of the medium, not the infallibility of the facts contained in the text itself. For instance, a blog might be 100% accurate, but seen as unreliable because the text can be changed with no record of that change (except for things like Google cache and the wayback machine), however an academic paper like Sokal's is more "reliable" because it cannot change and everyone can critique it. There is basically a reference point that everyone can refer to. Wikipedia, in this case, might be seen as more "reliable" than a blog because of our system of edit histories. However, we might be seen as less reliable than the paper version of Britanicca because they don't change their text except for between editions: few and far between. The rate at which information changes on Wikipedia, and the risk that it might be deleted (no matter how transparent the process) might be seen as making Wikipedia unreliable.

With sources that have lots of errors, one way of dealing with this problem is make an article on the source itself, or on the author with a note to the problems with the sources. If the article gets deleted due to a lack of notability, then perhaps the source should not be used in Wikipedia articles.

We need to stick to the facts, and not interpret them. We are an encyclopedia, we should leave the interpretation to the readers.

Some principles

• What constitutes a good source very much depends on what is being discussed. If X has written in their autobiography that they believe such and such a thing, then that autobiography will be a good source that X did believe that thing when the autobiography was written (even where the autobiography is ghosted, there would be an expectation that the subject has read and agreed the text of it).
• More remarkable claims require stronger sources. Information that President Bush visited Europe on such a date as part of a very public vicit could be sourced from a news website or newspaper. Such a source would not be suitable as a source of information about a matter of great controversy in academic circles.
• Blogs can be written by anyone. They are not peer reviewed and are not subject to any sort of scrutiny for accuracy. They are not acceptable sources for anything other than what the writer of the blog thinks or believes on a certain date.
  • So in other words, they are great for opinion, but bad for factual material? I would agree with this. - Ta bu shi da yu 21:38, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)
    • They offer someone's opinion - but the question then to ask is why is this person's opinion important/relevant. Usually the answer is no - as those whose opinions may be relevant often nowadays have websites of their own, rather than just blogs.

Academic Arbitration Committee

As detailed rules will be difficult to formulate, and people will still argue about them, should we have an Academic Arbitration Committee? The AcArbCom being there to opine on whether information that is disputed is adequately supported by sources. Just an idea - as it just seems strange that we have no procedures to arbitrate on whether content is supported by adequate sources. IMO, it is inappropriate to leave such a decision to a majority vote. Thoughts? jguk 21:24, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

See also

• Epistemology