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When a Primary Source Isn't Good Enough: Wikipedia
unixluv writes "Evidently, Wikipedia doesn't believe an author on his own motivations when trying to correct an article on his own book. A Wikipedia administrator claimed they need 'secondary sources.' I'm not sure where you would go to get a secondary source when you are the only author of a work. Thus, in a lengthy blog post for The New Yorker, Roth created his own secondary source. He wrote, 'My novel The Human Stain was described in the entry as "allegedly inspired by the life of the writer Anatole Broyard." ... This alleged allegation is in no way substantiated by fact. The Human Stain was inspired, rather, by an unhappy event in the life of my late friend Melvin Tumin, professor of sociology at Princeton for some thirty years.' The Wikipedia page has now been corrected."
Actually, the Wikipedia primary source policy including the ability to reference web pages, blogs, and forums even includes exceptions to include material like this. It just sounds like there were a bunch of anal retentive idiots editing the page who were more caught up in policy than trying to actually write an article with useful information.
There are some editors who act as gate keepers from time to time on Wikipedia articles. They are called "article owners", and something that is also considered against Wikipedia policy. Sadly they don't get slapped down often enough even when what they are doing is contrary to policy.
It is important to note that the information is reliable, and a talk page is certainly a good place to discuss such things. I've quoted blog entries and stood up to people who pulled things like this out (reverting their edits and responding on talk pages) where I've had these kind of "no blogs are allowed" believers to re-read the actual policy and back down. It does take weighing sources and judging them for credibility, and sometimes people are just lazy not wanting to put in extra effort to verify the source for themselves.
That in your case it was put into a secondary source sort of makes life easier, but I've seen secondary sources misquote the primary sources as well. The key work here is "scholarship", which sadly is not an easy skill to acquire. Writing a quality encyclopedia article is hard work and harder than it looks. It can be a learned skill acquired by participating on Wikipedia and learning from "the school of hard knocks", but it does take time and effort.