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Hello. Thanks for your edits to the above article. The error in the month of death was mine, so thank you in particular for correcting that. However, I've had to revert the place of death from Flinders to Melbourne, on the grounds that Wikipedia requires that all information has a verifiable source. I can't help noticing your username and wondering whether you are related to Roger Kimpton, and if so I don't doubt that you know what you're talking about... but Wikipedia absolutely requires that we as editors provide sources for such things; we can't allow personal knowledge alone, since as editors' real identities are not public there's no way of telling the difference between good faith edits and malicious ones. Of course, if you know of a published, checkable source which says Flinders, then that's another matter and could certainly be used. Loganberry (Talk) 15:14, 20 May 2009 (UTC)Reply
- Hello again. Unfortunately I've had to change it back to "Melbourne". Please understand that this is in no way an accusation that you have acted in bad faith, since I don't believe that for a moment. However, Wikipedia policy makes it very clear that we must have a verifiable source for our material. As such, the word of an editor — any editor — is simply not enough, and so I've felt constrained to change things back again. After all, someone else could come along tomorrow and change Kimpton's place of death to "London", but without a source, how could we be sure whether it was right or wrong. This particular policy can cause problems at times, but it is there for a good reason. Loganberry (Talk) 00:24, 25 May 2009 (UTC)Reply
- I'm going to bring up this issue at the WikiProject Cricket Talk page, which you can reach via WT:CRIC. You're very welcome to contribute to the discussion there. Loganberry (Talk) 00:48, 26 May 2009 (UTC)Reply
- My apologies for not responding to you sooner; I've been away from Wikipedia for the dreaded "real life" reasons. Since discussion there has dried up a bit, I'll respond to you personally here. I agree with Andrew nixon's comment that the best thing to do is to contact CricketArchive yourself and explain the situation to them. There are several sticking points that prevent us simply changing the article, even though I don't think any of us doubt that you know what you're talking about:
- 1) We don't know that you're who you say you are. There'd be absolutely nothing to stop someone registering your username and giving misleading information. That's the reason for the strict verification policy.
- 2) Although I think we'd all accept the place of burial evidence, as several people have pointed out that does not prove place of death. And from 1) above, "I know; I was there" is not acceptable precisely because it can't be proved.
- 3) You're quite right to point out the problem with "reliable" sources being wrong. This is a major difficulty with an encyclopedia like this which does not allow original research by its contributors, but it's one that we have to live with since that policy is central.
- For what it's worth, I don't think any of us are happy with having a "fact" in the article that we're pretty sure is incorrect, but I'm not sure how to get around it unless there's some publicly-available, independently checkable, documentary evidence as to place of death. Otherwise we'd have to accept that everyone who asserts that they know something personally is a good source, which would wreck the encyclopedia pretty quickly! Loganberry (Talk) 12:26, 17 June 2009 (UTC)Reply
Thankyou for taking the time to respond. I have just sent an email to cricinfo- when and if I get a response I hope it will be sufficient to have the profile changed. Regards James Kimpton
- I would hope so, and Cricinfo would be a good enough source for us to use. Cricinfo seem to be a bit less "human" in their dealings than CricketArchive, but for an important matter such as this one would hope they'll attend to it promptly. While I'm here, I'd like to thank you very much for your patience over this: it must be extremely frustrating, and I'm sure I'd feel the same way as you do were I in a similar position. Let's hope Cricinfo/CA do their stuff, so we can get things how they should be soon. Loganberry (Talk) 11:39, 18 June 2009 (UTC)Reply