What constitutes a valid source of information?
courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephangeyer/3497409683/
I came across this post on high school student readiness for university. What interested me were the questions towards the end of the article. “What is an author?”, “Who has the authority or expertise to speak?”, “How is trust established?”, “What counts as evidence?” I would love to know if there is a consensus on these. I suspect not, and I suspect there never will be.
I know some computer scientists that present great research at conferences, do amazing work, and are really smart. Many of them do not have formal schooling but are ’self taught’. Are they experts? In my eyes within their subject area they sure are. I have no issues referencing them or their work as supporting evidence for a particular problem or project I am working on or involved with. Anyone that implies they are not qualified because they haven’t published papers through ‘official’ channels is just being silly.
Similar to Music. There are people such as Jann Arden that I believe have no formal music training (she indicated this once at a concert I attended). I on the other hand took many years of formal piano. If anyone was to take my knowledge of music over Jann Arden due to my ‘formal’ training, I’d seriously question their intelligence.
Is Wikipedia bad? For me it depends on who writes and edits the particular article in question. How do you verify someones credentials? Not sure. Personally, I just assess for myself and use common sense. For example, if there is a article on a musical concept that Jann Arden or others in her area of expertise agree with and support then personally I would be fine using it as a reference.
I am glad the questions above are being discussed. I’d love to listen in on the discussions.
