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A fact from Indriði Indriðason appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 6 July 2010 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
How does wikipedia handle the reliability of a source? This article provides criticisms arising primarily from one source about the claims of Indriði, but it doesn't address whether or not the source itself is reliable.72.93.193.22 (talk) 00:17, 6 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There is a Reliable Sources noticeboard. However, the Swatos/Loftur book rests on 20 years of documentary and interview research, including an accepted academic thesis, and devotes considerable space to evaluating criticism levelled at the time and to citing and evaluating the contemporary reports, many of which were attempts to discern any possible fraud. As reported in the article, this is a case of mediumship that has never been debunked and on which a large amount of sceptical observation and testing was brought to bear at the time. That's a large part of the story, the book, and the article. The other refs are a mixture of Spiritualist and other "fringe" (by Wikipedia's own definition) POVs and of mentions indicating the notability of the topic (despite the remoteness of Iceland). (Indriði's case was a major impetus for Spiritualism becoming unusually popular there, but that wider story isn't notable enough for a free-standing article, in my judgement.) Note the list under Sources, which also supports the claim of notability; and if anyone can access more of those materials, that would be the way to go to check whether the article places undue weight on facets of the story or is unduly credulous, since yes, the Swatos/Loftur book is the major source for the article as it stands. (It devotes one chapter out of 6 to Indriði, plus refers to his case frequently in the remainder, including contrasting his case to others and the situation before he appeared with that afterwards.) Yngvadottir (talk) 00:53, 6 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The article is written as if these events really happened. There's hardly an "apparently" or "allegedly" to be seen. Now clearly any rational person would know that these phenomena didn't actually happen; however as currently written the article seems biased towards acceptance that these party tricks were somehow real phenomena. (The fact that they were investigated by scientists means little. Scientists are quite as gullible as the rest of us). I'd personally like to see a few sceptical adverbs thrown into the mix HieronymousCrowley (talk) 04:25, 6 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Weasel words are discouraged. The article reflects the sources. I have a qualifier on the "teleported from one locked room to another," which I found only in one source and that one with an agenda (and I also wonder whether it involved interpreting the conditions in the Experimental House and the location of one displacement differently from how I did, so I included it with taht qualifier). But for the rest - as explained in the article, this is a rare case where debunking was entirely unsuccessful. That's the story here, whether or not a modern team of experts with more technology would be able to find fraud. Fraud was never found in Indriði's case - and the same people did find it in other cases. NPOV means that's how it has to be reported, whatever one's individual opinion. Yngvadottir (talk) 05:23, 6 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
