Talk:Fail-Safe Investing

Clean up and expansion

Today I've cleaned up this article and removed some POV material including the use of the author as a source for content, and undue weight given to the 'permanent portfolio' concept. In the coming days I'm going to expand the article using secondary sources.-- — Keithbob • Talk • 22:09, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

I've done some mopping up and some reshaping of the article. If any one can find more sources we can add to or modify what I've done. Cheers! -- — Keithbob • Talk • 23:02, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Keithbob, I'm happy with your more succinct statement of the general strategy in your edit of Jan 7th, but not too clear why you think the excision of this passage : "In each of these phases, one class of investments will over-perform enough to compensate for the under-performance of the other components. For example stocks are said to do well during times of prosperity, gold during times of inflation, cash serves as a buffer during recession and bonds perform well during times of deflation." is an improvement? DaveApter (talk) 17:50, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi Dave, Not sure because it was 9 months ago, but likely it was because I felt it was cherry picked from the book itself. But I'm just guessing. Do we have a secondary source for that quote by any chance? Thanks.-- — Keithbob • Talk • 18:05, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

PS and oh yea, regarding all 17 strategies, that is fine as long as we have secondary sources. What we don't want to do is create an article that is like a school book report where we give our editorial view of what we think the book is about. Better to cite secondary sources who have commented on or highlighted various aspects of the book that they feel are important. This way the article stays objective. Hope that makes sense.-- — Keithbob • Talk • 18:08, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

I guess this raises the general point concerning Wikipedia articles about a book - is is appropriate to summarise what the book says (for which the book itself is an adequate and definitive source), or only to refer to items in the book's content which have independent validation in other sources? In this specific case I should have thought that all of his principles would have been alluded to in other works, but I'm not sure I'm enthusiastic enough to embark on the necessary research! DaveApter (talk) 07:51, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

The book may be used as a source for itself on fundamental facts like the publisher, publication date etc. But WP is based on secondary sources. Not the subject telling about itself. Also, how do we decide which points from the book deserve to be noted here and with how much space or emphasis for each point? By deciding those things ourselves we are performing original research and that is not permitted on WP per WP:OR. Other editors may have a different view on this but this is my understanding and interpretation of WP guidelines.-- — Keithbob • Talk • 15:24, 18 September 2013 (UTC)