User talk:John E

You will probably be interested in what I wrote at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#Eyewitness. Since the Village Pump (VP) pages are periodically cleared out, that will eventually be deleted, so I am also copying here as a hopefully more permanent record, but I imagine any discussion will happen on the VP. You may want to chime in there yourself. -- Jmabel | Talk 23:09, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)

Another interesting problem: on Talk:Sabra and Shatila Massacre we've had someone come forward -- he's even taken a Wikipedia account -- who (almost certainly accurately) identifies himself as John Harbo, who worked as a correspondent for a Norwegian paper in Beirut at the time, and who was present in the aftermath of the events, and who is quoted in some of the best-known documents about the events. He has additional material he'd like to add to Wikipedia, but it appears it wasn't in these documents. I've asked if he's ever published any of this anywhere (e.g. in his own journalism, which would certainly be citable), so we can quote it without violating our rules on auto-biography and original research.

Still, this all seems a bit weird to me: as Wikipedia gains in importance, things like this are going to happen more and more: people directly involved in historically significant events will approach us with attributable (but previously unpublished) information. It seems really weird if we can't cite them. Is there any way within our current rules to accommodate this? And if not, should we consider a way to change that? Maybe some wikipedia equivalent of an affidavit? -- Jmabel | Talk 23:04, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)