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by trashburger 730 days ago
"Original research"/primary sources should not matter for facts, i.e. those laid out as actual code.

(It didn't land well.)

2 comments

I agree. It doesn't seem to make sense for some facts.

I was way out of my wheelhouse on Wikipedia one day and I saw some popular K-Pop group had announced their new album release date on their Instagram feed. I updated their Wikipedia entry with a citation to the group's own announcement and was very swiftly smashed by some over-arching editor who told me what a fuck-up my life was for even thinking this might be a suitable source for the information.

If the fact is in the source cited, primary sources are okay as direct sources. If it is an analytical interpretation of the source (such as most fact claims about the source or its contents, rather than fact claims made directly in the source), then that interpretation needs sourced from somewhere.
Somewhere that isn't the person updating the article, that is. The trick is to make a random website that does the same, and then it's totally fine!