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Comment by Dalewyn | Hacker News Reader

One of Wikipedia's sourcing paradoxes is that the literal horse's mouth is the worst source as to be unusable.

No, primary sources are fine if they say the thing you are sourcing them for (high quality secondary sources are usually preferred, but primary sources aren't “the worst” or “unusuable”); they aren't okay for something that requires additional analysis/interpretation. (That's true of any source, but it’s more of an issue with the use of primary sources.)

I mean this as a genuine comment and not a political non-sequitor but we'll see how it lands. If you think that's a bad idea, can you imagine what Donald J. Trump's wiki page would look like if you allowed 'primary' sources? Or, really, any political figure. Though I think he makes a very good implicit case against allowing that.

"Original research"/primary sources should not matter for facts, i.e. those laid out as actual code.

(It didn't land well.)

I agree. It doesn't seem to make sense for some facts.

I was way out of my wheelhouse on Wikipedia one day and I saw some popular K-Pop group had announced their new album release date on their Instagram feed. I updated their Wikipedia entry with a citation to the group's own announcement and was very swiftly smashed by some over-arching editor who told me what a fuck-up my life was for even thinking this might be a suitable source for the information.

If the fact is in the source cited, primary sources are okay as direct sources. If it is an analytical interpretation of the source (such as most fact claims about the source or its contents, rather than fact claims made directly in the source), then that interpretation needs sourced from somewhere.

Somewhere that isn't the person updating the article, that is. The trick is to make a random website that does the same, and then it's totally fine!

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