User:John Z/drafts/blogs

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The policy on blogs is unnecessarily restrictive and should be changed. For instance, in the area of Middle East Studies, there are many valuable and highly informative blogs by recognized academic authorities in their fields - e.g. Abu Aardvark, Helena Cobban, Juan Cole, and Martin Kramer and Daniel Pipes. Cole's blog was in fact what brought him to public prominence as a talking head on TV, editorial writer, etc, after unsuccessful attempts to gain attention earlier. Cobban, for instance had an article on Hezbollah in the Boston Review, which did not print the footnotes, which can only be gotten at her blog site - so eliminating blogs would decrease the scholarly quality of a reference.

I propose that if a blog is done by a recognized authority, if the material is of a type that could be published elsewhere, if the blog has been referred to as a source by other reputable (print) sources, etc.