The easiest solution would have been to ask Roth to write a blog post (or something similar) detailing the inspiration for the book -- as far as I know, that inspiration was not publicized until the open letter was published. Another option would have been an interview with basically any website.
While I'm sure someone will chime in saying "that's against WP:RS!", it's actually not. See WP:SELPPUB: "Self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources of information *about themselves*, usually in articles about themselves or their activities" (emphasis in original) --Ed On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 12:03 PM, Fred Bauder <fredb...@fairpoint.net>wrote: > > On Tue, 11 Sep 2012, Charles Matthews wrote: > >> The Roth situation was WP between a rock (celeb culture with its > >> ohmigod > >> you dissed X) and a hard place (academic credibility requires that, > >> yes, > >> you do require verifiable additions and don't accept argument from > >> authority). It would tend to illustrate that celeb power can > >> potentially be > >> deployed against serious discourse. Countervailing "admin power" is > >> always > >> a questionable analysis. > > > > If someone who could reasonably be seen as speaking for Wikipedia told > > him > > that Wikipedia needed secondary sources for his claim, they are wrong, > > and > > Wikipedia failed. > > > > It completely misses the point to explain how Wikipedia's actual policies > > are > > reasonable. The policy that Roth was told about is not reasonable; if it > > doesn't match Wikipedia's actual policy, he shouldn't be expected to > > figure > > that out. > > What is our actual policy? What should he have been told, and how? > > Fred > > > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l > _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
