[WikiEN-l] The vexed issue of sources

[Daniel P. B. Smith]

> Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2006 22:06:50 -0800
>

> Libraries are wonderful things, but a scholar who believes that  
> "the sum
> of all human knowledge" is to be found in the library alone is like a
> medieval monk who believes that the same is to be found only in the
> monastery.

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and an encyclopedia _is_ a distillation  
of things to be found in libraries.

Things that are _not_ to be found in libraries are published in peer- 
reviewed journals, not encyclopedias. Wikipedia is not a peer- 
reviewed journal. And journals have their own requirements, which in  
fact are more stringent than those for an encyclopedia, one being  
reproducibility of results. That's the "new-knowledge" equivalent of  
what we call "verifiability" and it is _much_ harder to do.

Which is why writing an encyclopedia article takes on the order of  
weeks while writing a research paper takes on the order of years.

Things that are _not_ to be found in libraries are also published in  
popular magazines, books by any publisher that thinks they can make  
money by selling them, self-published, published on the web, etc.  
Whether these are to be called "knowledge" depends on which  
definition of "knowledge" you use. In the Britannica's slogan, "The  
sum of human knowledge," they likely meant AHD4's meaning number 4,  
"4. Learning; erudition: teachers of great knowledge." It is, after  
all, an encyclo-PAEDIA.