User talk:Pinemarten
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Welcome!
Hello, Pinemarten, and welcome to the ISFDB Wiki! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
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I hope you enjoy editing here! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will insert your name and the date. If you need help, check out the community portal, or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome!} Ahasuerus 21:15, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
Catherine Asaro's date of birth
Re: authors' dates of birth, we generally follow publicly available sources. In this case Catherine Asaro's DOB is stated by Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Wikipedia. A Google search on "Catherine Asaro date of birth" shows "November 6, 1955" and her picture at the top of the page. Ahasuerus 21:20, 20 December 2014 (UTC)
- Wikipedia uses her article here as a reference. We may also assume that the other source uses Wikipedia or this article. If you read the page on Wikipedia about "reliable sources" then you will find that none of these are acceptable. Data sites like these that can be edited by anyone tend to source each other. Look at Sondra Locke's talk page on Wikipedia as an example. Sources need to be professional in quality and not and endless loop of each other. This can be labelled as 'circular sourcinng'. Pinemarten 00:27, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
- Circular sourcing can certainly be an issue. In this case, as per Google Books, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series, Volume 116, page 11 says "ASARO, Catherine (Ann) 1955- PERSONAL: Born November 6, 1955, in Oakland, CA", so I think we are safe. Let me add a note to her record and we should be in better shape.
- As far as Encyclopedia of Science Fiction goes, it is not publicly editable and has its own sources, although some of them overlap with our sources. Ahasuerus 00:51, 21 December 2014 (UTC)