Talk:Edward H. Brooks

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Untitled

This image is a work of a U.S. Army soldier or employee, taken or made during the course of the person's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain. Ted (talk) 16:40, 1 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sources

Ted, Thanks for your message. I've restored the CN and ref improve tags. Per WP:IRS "wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published sources." Further, per WP:V, the source must be verifiable. Materials in a private collection not open to the public would probably not meet this criteria. The purpose of the CN and ref improve tags is to serve as a call to editors to help find reliable, published sources that can be verified. Ocalafla (talk) 13:49, 13 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ocalafla, wouldn't a biographer consider source material to be the most reliable? As witnessed daily in the press and on Wikipedia, publication does not necessarily mean veracity. Would it help if I posted scans of the source materials as reference, thereby making it "published" and "open to the public"?

Ted (talk) 16:41, 1 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ted, I think WP:IRS is very helpful on these issues. While your point that "publication does not necessarily mean veracity" is well taken, wikipedia's policy is clear.

With regard to "source material" I think you are talking about "primary sources". Wikipedia's policy on that is at WP:PRIMARY which says, in part, "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources." and "primary sources that have been reliably published may be used in Wikipedia; but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them."(emphasis added). Posting scans of the primary sources in your possession would not constitute reliable publication. That said, there may be some way to use what you have, I just don't know about it.

Hope this helps. Ocalafla (talk) 13:10, 3 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ocalafla, that's an unfortunate stance... so much important information stands to be lost because someone didn't/can't/won't spend money to publish it. Seems to defeat the spirit of an open-source encyclopedia. It was my understanding that the whole point of open-source was that the collective wisdom of authors and editors would ultimately result in more reliable information than that which is "blessed" by a single editor for paper publication.

That said, who decides what "reliable publication" is? Certainly, someone's blog asserting information would not be considered "reliable publication", but a biography produced by government personnel for the retirement of a Lt. General would seem to fall into a more reliable category. Ted (talk) 23:31, 3 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not defending or opposing WP's policy, just stating what it is. That said, I suppose part of the logic is that anyone can post whatever they want on any number of free blog sites (meaning WP's policies are hardly causing any important info to be lost), but WP seems to strive to a bit of a higher standard while still aiming for the benefits of collective wisdom you mention. Perhaps a tough balance to strike. Ocalafla (talk) 12:10, 4 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So continues the long, slow death of common sense.--172.162.12.75 (talk) 03:45, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]