User talk:Legalnerd

Mahmudiyah killings
It's great that you're adding information to the article with sources, but unfortunately, blogs are not considered reliable sources. A lot of what you added concerns information about living people, so we have to be careful about any potentially controversial information that is added. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 17:49, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, let's try this again. Blogs (as you are attempting to source) are not considered reliable sources.  Please find a new source.  Jauerbackdude?/dude. 19:02, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Sorry - I didn't see this email from you until after I kept trying to re-do my changes. I hadn't heard that there was an issue with blogs, and I'm particularly annoyed by that becuase this particular blog was heralded by the Huffington Post and the Paducah Sun as being some of the most reliable coverage of the trial. The Huffington Post was actually using this blog for some of their coverage. I humbly submit that, especially given the intense inaccuracies of the original media coverage of this case, I should be able to source a blog written by someone who took copious notes during the entire Green trial.

That failing, why can't I cite the transcripts of the Green trial? Those are public transcripts, and though they are not on published on the internet, they are available to the public and they are much more accurate than old news articles from 3 years before the trials.

Here's another question: if I'm not able to cite transcripts of the Green trial, does that mean that if other media did not happen to report the inaccuracies of previous media reports (such as the locations that Green grew up), does that mean that wikipedia will forever be incorrect about these things, because we can only cite other media?

Please help me understand this process.Legalnerd (talk) 19:26, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
 * No problem, as a new user, it takes some getting used to - especially when the information that you're adding is being removed. Since blogs are self-published sources, they can't be considered reliable sources.  As far as the actual transcripts, they would be fine to use, but you actually need to source them correctly and not just note it between marks.  Please make sure to paraphrase in your writing as well.  I'm not saying that you cut/pasted, but I just want to make sure as to their being no copyright violations.  Without having actually looked myself, I'm sure the trial logs would be easy to find on the internet (outside of a blog) or some accurate newspaper articles have been written with the information that you wish to add. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 19:52, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Why are you still removing my edits? I am citing things correctly.
 * I didn't remove your edits. That was by someone else.  Check the page history and talk to that person.  As far as your citations, no, not quite.  See WP:CITE for help. Jauerbackdude?/dude. 11:16, 2 October 2009 (UTC)