Richard Jensen <rjensen(a)uic.edu> wrote:
Looking at a spinoff Shakespeare article:
[[Shakespeare's plays]]. It's
peak activity year was 2007. A dozen people made 10 or more edits. It
has 26 citations and no bibliography. There are no scholarly journals.
Half the citations are over 40 years old. Only one book was published
after 2007. That profile strongly suggests editors who are unfamiliar
with current scholarship.
With a couple minor exceptions the youngest source
cited in the
footnotes is 2006. The newest item in the bibliography is one book from
2007, I saw n=1 article in a scholarly journal (from 1969). Maybe it's
ok for a college freshman but an English major so unaware of the recent
scholarship would not get a good grade.
These sentiments worry me.
Our mission in making an encyclopedia is to provide the most important
facts about the most important topics, and present them in an accessible
way for the lay reader. (Salient facts about notable topics, if you
prefer.) We emphasize matters that have been settled after long
investigation and debate. When it comes to conclusions that rest on
complex thought that considers a wide range of information, we favor the
established scholarly consensus. Verifiability and reliability are at
the core of Wikipedia's approach to content.
Favoring the most recent scholarly publications opposes Wikipedia in
three ways. First, it opposes reliability. Scholarly publications are
actually a forum for debate. Scholarly publication is mainly a way for
the scholarly community to try out new ideas and, over years of
criticism and refinement, see which ones stand up to informed scrutiny
and which don't. Even the academic world, with its peer review and
high standards, is prone to fads and fashions. New ideas come and go.
Often, after a few years, ideas that dominated new scholarship come to
seem ridiculous. Remember lit crit?
Second, it opposes our selectiveness about the information we include.
In a topic that has already received scholarly interest for decades or
more, the main findings have been stable for a long time. Newer research
tends to favor ever narrower and more esoteric subtopics. At some point,
the salience of most new information or ideas being published drops
below the threshold for inclusion in an encyclopedia--that is, in a
*summary* of knowledge.
Third, it opposes verifiability. Scholarly journals are usually written
for a scholarly audience. They assume a reader with highly specialized
knowledge. They are often filled with jargon and they follow highly
refined conventions. Lay readers find them confusing and often
misunderstand them.
Ben Kovitz
http://mypage.iu.edu/~bkovitz/