Its confusing isn't it? In Wikipedia speak you need someone other than the 'primary source' reporting on the information 'from' the primary source. Kind of like link authority in page rank. So if someone says "I'm the VP at JC penney and our web site is www.eatmybits.com" that is a 'primary' source but its not verified by anyone else, but if the New York times says "Oh look, JC penny just changed their primary URL to www.eatmybits.com" then that secondary source, quoting a primary source, gets approved. Its the whole 'someone we trust has vouched for something you are saying, so we kinda sort of believe it to be true.'
The whole thing is made worse by Wikipedia editors who tend to speak in a short hand which as time goes on gets more and more opaque.
All of it being a result of volunteer efforts to curate a source of 'facts.'
Thank you. I honestly don't know quite what to make of the whole situation. I understand the issues of making the project function well enough, I think, but the implementation saddens me.
I'd like to think that even if I were 100% sympathetic with wikipedia policy, I'd still be able to see how petty, stupid and embarrassing quominus's rant was. It strikes me as pure, but of course unintentional, self-parody on so many levels. And of course I'm saddened because I can see that there's a personality type that would think quominus's spite and the fixation on fiddly minutia instead of the big picture is brilliant and great... and they're probably the sort of people who edit Wikipedia articles.
The whole thing is made worse by Wikipedia editors who tend to speak in a short hand which as time goes on gets more and more opaque.
All of it being a result of volunteer efforts to curate a source of 'facts.'