danah boyd

Looks like a discussion thread is occuring about the Wikipedia article on dana boyd, and an interesting discussion is taking place about what happens when The media is incorrect about something and we don’t have any sources that are correct. The discussion is interesting, but some of the premises are false. There are a lot of examples when the main stream media is wrong, that doesn’t mean wikipedia has to be. And just because one editor on a rather isolated page has a non-centrist view on our Verifiability policy doesn’t mean it’s the wikipedia consensus. From the policy itself,

Neither online nor print sources deserve an automatic assumption of reliability by virtue of the medium they are printed in. All reports must be evaluated according to the processes and people that created them.

If it’s obvious that she is running a blog, and it’s really her, and her legal name is danah boyd, that’s a source, and it’s verifiable. Now, on to the bad news, WikiMedia has a technical problem with articles that start with lower case letters, so there is no reason we wouldn’t change it other than the fact that it’s currently technically impossible. I don’t know if the people that originally responded on wikipedia were aware of this, but it’s true, and it is the reason we can’t just move the article. (for other examples see “IPod“, and “EBay“