Camera-wiki.org:Use of sources

This help page gives some recommendations on how to use sources for Camera-wiki.org articles. It is absolutely necessary to cite these sources in the articles themselves: see Citing sources for more information on how to do that.

Printed sources

According to their time of publication and original purpose, printed sources on a camera model or company can usually be divided in the following categories.

Primary sources

Primary sources are documents contemporary with the events. These may be books, magazine articles, advertisements, leaflets, etc. Their original purpose was usually to promote, describe or test the products of a company.

Use of these sources is encouraged whenever possible. They may contain inaccuracies, but in the field of camera research, they usually contain fewer outright mistakes than do later sources. Caution should be exerted however on some assertions they contain. For example, some manufacturer's assertion that its camera is the first to incorporate this or that feature should not be blindly accepted as a fact.

Original documents are usually harder to access than other sources, and suspicions of sloppy citing (or worse) could bring the verifiability of Camera-wiki.org contents into question. Bearing this in mind, we can classify original documents into three sub-categories.

Original documents newly reproduced are advertisements and the like that are photographically reproduced within later books, magazine articles, web pages and the like. Even what is not on the web is fairly easy to access (at least in larger libraries in the country of publication), and this material can and should be liberally cited. However, photographing or scanning the reproduction and publishing it within Camera-wiki.org would violate the rights of the person who reproduced it (and/or those of the original publisher).

Original documents accessible at a public library include photographic magazines or books; access to these documents is not necessarily easy but should be possible (at least in larger libraries in the country of publication). They can be cited without bringing the article's verifiability into question. It is very likely that scans or photographs could be legally used within Camera-wiki.org, but the issues are too complex to be dealt with here; aside from any legal issue over copying, Camera-wiki.org encourages all its contributors to treat old or fragile material owned by libraries and others with respect and to hesitate before photocopying old material even when permitted to do so.

Inaccessible original documents include instruction manuals and advertising brochures printed by a company, which are rarely in library collections and are normally difficult or impossible to locate without a good deal of luck and patience. When cited, these documents should be made accessible to the readers by scanning them and publishing them in the site if either they are in public domain (see Copyright expiration) or their reproduction would constitute fair use under U.S. copyright law. Camera-wiki.org takes the same interpretation of fair use as does Wikipedia, whose explanation for its users is here.

Older historical accounts

Older historical accounts are documents published several years after the events, but before the subject began to attract collecting interest. These documents usually fall in either of two sub-categories.

Older official accounts are articles or books written by or on behalf of companies wanting to document their own history. These were usually written by people working for these companies, but not necessarily at the time of the events. These people are presumed to have had access to documents which were not easily available to others.

Older unofficial accounts are those who were not written on behalf of a company. They usually consist of magazine articles by writers particularly interested in a past subject. They sometimes contain primary testimonies, such as interviews of people which were key figures in the events, and are sometimes written by people directly involved in those events. In that particular case, their status is close to that of original documents, although we should bear in mind that human memory is fallible (see the Wikipedia listing of memory biases and the testimonies might exaggerate or contain mistakes.

What is said in older historical accounts is interesting in its own right, and may be mentioned in an article. However the assertions they contain should not be trusted blindly, notably when they conflict with original documents or direct physical evidence. Official accounts do not have a special status because they were endorsed by a company: some are known to contain mistakes or omissions, and they should not be taken as definitive.

Older historical accounts were often used as main sources by later research. Mistakes they contain have sometimes been repeated and spread by later authors. It is unwise to "confirm" what is said by these documents by citing later documents which may have copied them, and the most solid confirmation comes from primary sources or (where relevant) direct (and educated) examination of the physical evidence.

Collectors' sources

Collectors' sources or recent sources are all the documents which were published a considerable time after the events, after the items began to attract collecting interest. They are usually written by people who are primarily collectors, and who were not directly involved in the events. They include collectors' books and magazines, or historical articles in mainstream photographic magazines.

In the field of camera research, such sources rarely name their own sources, and rely heavily on the personal observations of their authors. Some are extremely accurate, some impressionistic and uninformative, others again contain huge mistakes. You should gauge whether a particular author or editor has tried hard to get at the facts and thus whether what the writer says is trustworthy.

Citing collectors' sources is permitted in Camera-wiki.org; it is however better to confirm what they contain by citing primary sources. Citing them complements citing primary sources: the original sources are more solid, the recent sources easier to access. This allows for two levels of verifiability: people who want to casually check your assertions can go to the recent sources, those who want more in-depth check can make the effort to go back to the primary sources.

Some recent sources contain interviews with people who were key figures of the events. These can be handled as original documents, keeping in mind that these primary testimonies were gathered long after the events occurred, and might contain mistakes (unless the witness is known to have kept written records) and exaggerations.

Websites

Websites are valid sources in their own right. The official websites can be used the same as the official printed sources mentioned above, and the collectors' websites are similar to their printed counterparts. As for recent printed sources, some websites are thoroughly checked and very accurate, and others merely plagiarize other sources without checking them.

Citing a website as a source is convenient for the reader, who can immediately check the given assertion. Conversely websites have an unstable nature, which is an inconvenient. The contents can change and the support for an assertion can disappear, or the website can be put offline altogether. Some websites are archived by archiving services, but this is not a general rule, and these services sometimes archive the text but not the pictures. It is therefore a good idea to cite a website together with a printed source whenever possible, to allow the reader to access the information quickly while preserving the durability of the claim.

Direct physical evidence

Direct observation of surviving items such as cameras or lenses, either through pictures or by direct handling, is a valid source in its own right. However mention of direct observation in an article poses verifiability problems.

Two cases can be distinguished. Observation of general patterns for items which were produced in quantities and are not too hard to find today may be mentioned in an article. For example you can state that you observed that all the examples of such camera model with a serial number in the 30xxxx range are black, and all those with a number in the 31xxxx are silver, and infer that these were two distinct batches. These patterns are verifiable by readers who would have the patience to do so by monitoring the used camera market.

Observation of an isolated example of an item may be mentioned, but you should try your best to actually show pictures of it to prove your assertions. Keeping personal records of the observation is a good idea, for example by downloading pictures of the camera to your own hard disk. However, if you don't have the explicit permission of the copyright owner of these pictures to incorporate them within Camera-wiki.org, this will be insufficient to assert durable verifiability of your claims. When you leave the Camera-wiki.org project, either because you don't want to participate any more or for other unfortunate reasons, and you can no longer be contacted, your claims will probably be doubted or deleted.

How this differs from Wikipedia policies

If you are accustomed to working with the English-language Wikipedia, please note that the above recommendations differ from Wikipedia policies.

The goal of Camera-wiki.org is to provide factually true and exhaustive information on cameras. This information should be verifiable, but it does not need to be verifiable by any reader with only casual knowledge of cameras. It is enough that it can be checked by people who actually have the knowledge, willing and time to do so.

Articles written for Camera-wiki.org following the above recommendations would certainly break Wikipedia's policy forbidding original research and won't be suitable for reproduction there, even if the use by both sites of GFDL means there is no legal impediment.

Wikipedia's policy places a number of restrictions on the use of "primary sources", including direct eyewitness accounts, which contradict Camera-wiki.org's practice. It notably asks not to make any use of primary sources other than "mak[ing] descriptive claims that can be checked by anyone without specialist knowledge." As said above, this rule doesn't apply in Camera-wiki.org, and conclusions can be drawn from primary sources which actually require specialist knowledge of camera history.

Wikipedia encourages the use of "secondary and tertiary sources": "Wikipedia articles should rely on reliable, published secondary sources wherever possible. This means that we only publish the opinions of reliable authors, and not the opinions of Wikipedians who have read and interpreted primary source material for themselves" (from here.) This rule does not apply in Camera-wiki.org. In the field of camera research, the secondary sources are the older historical accounts and recent collectors sources described above, and usually do not provide the level of reliability and verifiability which can be expected from secondary sources in other fields.

In camera research, the quality of an article relying on direct analysis of original sources may surpass that of any secondary source available on the subject, and facts previously unpublished are welcome. Controversies might arise from this, but they should be easy to settle. At the worst, the controversy can be explained in the article in simple words.

What is true of camera research is obviously not true of other research domains. In Wikipedia, it is extremely unlikely that anyone could write anything both unpublished and worthwhile on nuclear science or ancient history, let alone living people: the resulting debates (or worse) would soon be crippling.