Reliable sources for deaths

[David Gerard-2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaun_Wylie

My source for the death is a tweet.

It is a tweet from the official Bletchley Park feed, so I think it's
reliable enough ... but I've asked them for more, and a photo if they
can :-)

Remember: "reliable sources" is a guideline and requires the
application of good sense.


- d.

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l@...
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

[Sam Blacketer]

On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 10:54 PM, David Gerard <dgerard@...> wrote:

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaun_Wylie
>
> My source for the death is a tweet.
>
> It is a tweet from the official Bletchley Park feed, so I think it's
> reliable enough ... but I've asked them for more, and a photo if they
> can :-)
>
> Remember: "reliable sources" is a guideline and requires the
> application of good sense.
>

Indeed. I would think that twitter feeds can be reliable under the same
approach as for blogs - if the blog is an official source of information by
a media outlet, or other institution which is reliable, it is a reliable
source.

--
Sam Blacketer
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l@...
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

[Carcharoth]

On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 10:54 PM, David Gerard <dgerard@...> wrote:

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaun_Wylie
>
> My source for the death is a tweet.
>
> It is a tweet from the official Bletchley Park feed, so I think it's
> reliable enough ... but I've asked them for more, and a photo if they
> can :-)
>
> Remember: "reliable sources" is a guideline and requires the
> application of good sense.

Suggest upgrading the source later as needed. I wonder how long it
will be before someone writes a list of "Twitter firsts"...

Carcharoth

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l@...
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

[geni]

2009/10/7 David Gerard <dgerard@...>:

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaun_Wylie
>
> My source for the death is a tweet.
>
> It is a tweet from the official Bletchley Park feed, so I think it's
> reliable enough ... but I've asked them for more, and a photo if they
> can :-)
>
> Remember: "reliable sources" is a guideline and requires the
> application of good sense.
>
>
> - d.

Template:Cite press release would probably be the closest but there
are other options:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Citation_templates



--
geni

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l@...
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

[Gwern Branwen]

On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 5:54 PM, David Gerard <dgerard@...> wrote:

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaun_Wylie
>
> My source for the death is a tweet.
>
> It is a tweet from the official Bletchley Park feed, so I think it's
> reliable enough ... but I've asked them for more, and a photo if they
> can :-)
>
> Remember: "reliable sources" is a guideline and requires the
> application of good sense.
>
>
> - d.

Here's what I wonder: how do we apply WP:V to *tweets* in a few decades?

--
gwern

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l@...
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

[geni]

2009/10/7 Gwern Branwen <gwern0@...>:

> On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 5:54 PM, David Gerard <dgerard@...> wrote:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaun_Wylie
>>
>> My source for the death is a tweet.
>>
>> It is a tweet from the official Bletchley Park feed, so I think it's
>> reliable enough ... but I've asked them for more, and a photo if they
>> can :-)
>>
>> Remember: "reliable sources" is a guideline and requires the
>> application of good sense.
>>
>>
>> - d.
>
> Here's what I wonder: how do we apply WP:V to *tweets* in a few decades?
>
> --
> gwern

I doubt the fad will last that long and anything significant will have
been dealt with through other sources. I suspect the challenge in a
few decades will be sources that change a fair bit and don't publicly
change log to to the extent wikipedia does.

Cite:Interactive media has the potential to be interesting

Legally speaking citing stuff that is protected by defunct DRM may be
a future problem.

For the rather longer term citing interplanetary sources is going to
be one of the problems an interplanetary wikipedia would face.

--
geni

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l@...
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

[Carcharoth]

On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 12:52 AM, geni <geniice@...> wrote:

<snip>

> For the rather longer term citing interplanetary sources is going to
> be one of the problems an interplanetary wikipedia would face.

You just get the feeling, don't you, that the future sometimes takes
care of itself. Can the way information is handled change so much that
"citing" it becomes irrelevant? Will all information packets contain
within themselves some "provenance", allowing people to verify the
information first-hand? And will the programs used by that far-future
information-gathering and information-querying system spider along the
information trail to verify things for those gathering the
information?

Or will information networks in the future be a contradictory mess?

Imagine citing information in a world where time travel was possible!
Or there were alternate universes! How about citing information passed
between alien species with a totally different concept of information
recording and flow?

Are we fully off-topic for this list yet? :-)

Carcharoth

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l@...
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

[David Gerard-2]

2009/10/8 Carcharoth <carcharothwp@...>:

> Are we fully off-topic for this list yet? :-)


Absolutely on-topic - it's all about We're Here To Write An Encyclopedia!


- d.

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l@...
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

[geni]

2009/10/8 Carcharoth <carcharothwp@...>:

> On Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 12:52 AM, geni <geniice@...> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>> For the rather longer term citing interplanetary sources is going to
>> be one of the problems an interplanetary wikipedia would face.
>
> You just get the feeling, don't you, that the future sometimes takes
> care of itself. Can the way information is handled change so much that
> "citing" it becomes irrelevant? Will all information packets contain
> within themselves some "provenance", allowing people to verify the
> information first-hand? And will the programs used by that far-future
> information-gathering and information-querying system spider along the
> information trail to verify things for those gathering the
> information?

All moves to move the internet in that dirrection have been kind of
shot down and the P2P mob are actualy working to take us further away
from this senario.

> Or will information networks in the future be a contradictory mess?

See no reason for them to be any worse on earth than they are now. You
hit issues with interplanetry stuff due to limited bandwidth and poor
ping times (Jubiter is at best half an hour away. Want to try editing
wikipedia with that kind of lag?)

> Imagine citing information in a world where time travel was possible!

Acessdate should keep up with that.

> Or there were alternate universes!

|Universe=alpha| or one namespace per universe.

>How about citing information passed
> between alien species with a totally different concept of information
> recording and flow?

Finding ways to transcribe such information into human formats is
likely to be a problem others deal with before wikipedia.

--
geni

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l@...
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

[Daniel R. Tobias]

On Wed, 7 Oct 2009 18:53:21 -0400, Gwern Branwen wrote:

> Here's what I wonder: how do we apply WP:V to *tweets* in a few
> decades?

A problem with tweets, even "official" ones, is that Twitter is a
relatively informal medium compared to most of the others that are
used as sources.

The problems one needs to consider include:

* Is the 'twitterer' actually an official spokesperson, or possibly
just somebody impersonating one?  Is the account verified?

* Even if it's known to be the true, official account, do you
actually know who is providing the information there?  Is it the
celebrity him/herself, or some marketing flack acting on his/her
behalf?  Maybe the flack is posting stuff in the celebrity's name
that they themselves don't agree with, or vice/versa, the celebrity
is acting as a loose cannon and giving his/her top-of-the-head, spur-
of-the-moment views that don't necessarily represent what direction
their career and works will go when the marketing types get through
with them?

* Whoever it is that's posting, are they trustworthy for accurately
representing the true viewpoint of the entity involved, or are they
prone to kidding around, starting hoaxes, playing devil's advocate to
get a reaction, stirring up controversies for publicity, slinging
bullshit, getting drunk and spouting nonsense, etc.?

* If they keep changing their mind and posting contradictory stuff,
which one should be regarded as official, or should it just be
reported that they contradicted themselves?  Should their errors,
typos, misstatements, misunderstandings, etc., be reported?


--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/



_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l@...
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l