Talk:Pacific Comics

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[edit] Needs a re-write

This article needs a complete re-write and proper sources. Its main source is a restrospecitive story about the company created by interviewing the founders published in a local weekly paper[1] written by a comics buff [2] rather than a journalist. Therefore the source is really a primary (self) reference. OccamzRazor (talk) 02:24, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Not sure how you arrive at the San Diego Reader being a self-referential source by that logic. A retrospective is surely a good source, and I would have thought that an article created by interviewing the key people made it even better. Mr Sandford may well be a comics buff, but he has also written for the SDR for "over a decade." If having an interest in the topic being written about (as you seem to imply) automatically downgrades the validity of it as a source, then that would surely impact on a very wide range of articles by a large number of individuals. Clearly in this instance Mr Sandofrd has some inside knowledge, but I don't think that his article can be dismissed on that logic. If you can find a plethora of alternate sources, so much the better; if you can't, then I don't think that you can (appear to) so cavalierly dismiss the extant one(s). ntnon (talk) 02:37, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you - otherwise we get into some weirdly circular reasoning. (Emperor (talk) 03:43, 26 May 2008 (UTC))

The San Diego Reader article is not a self-published source. A self-published source would be, for example, a website maintain by the Schanes brothers. Nor is it a primary source, such as an actual Pacific Comics comic book or a company press release. As such, I believe that it meets the criteria of WP:RS. True, it is not a mainstream paper, and although it may not have the same reputation for fact-checking as, say, the San Diego Union-Tribune, I think it's safe to say that they do have some fact-checkers, particularly to keep them from being sued over controversial political stories. --GentlemanGhost (talk) 19:21, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. That was my assumption also.

(N.B. Anyone else find it mildly odd that in Wikipedia-terms, shunning "Primary" sources seems to be encouraged, whereas in terms of writing academically (particularly about History), "Primary" sources are meant to be the be-all and end-all...? Meaning, logically, that a well-written secondary source - the purported ideal resource for Wikipedia - will be derived mainly from primary sources, which are themselves not/less acceptable...) ntnon (talk) 21:12, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that primary sources are shunned, per se. The problem you get with primary sources is when someone tries to interpret the source. If I recall correctly, the example which the Wikipedia guideline gives is the Bible. It's one thing to report what is in the Bible but another to explain what it means. Also, primary sources are not particularly useful for establishing notability. But, other than that, there's nothing wrong with citing primary sources. (And again, the San Diego Reader is not a primary source unless it is talking about itself.) --GentlemanGhost (talk) 19:19, 27 May 2008 (UTC)