Deryck - yes, it would be bizarre if Wikipedia told the National Maritime
Museum their work wasn't up to our standards. However, because it's unusual
to get information of this nature and in this format, I'm keen to establish
a consensus at the outset rather than risk an argument about it later.
I have been working with Royal Navy history for the past year or so and am
working
under one of NAM Rodger's students right now in writing an
undergraduate honors thesis. As it goes for organizations which publish or
support Naval History, the NMM is considered one of the more important
authorities along with the Naval Records Society which sponsor or publish
sets of sources. It clearly is reliable and I would be surprised if someone
questioned it.
That being said, as Historian, I would find the donation much more useful if
it were sponsored on another website (a closed wiki vetted by the NMM?),
that way historians can use it without having to cite one of the Wikimedia
projects. History, in particular, is a mildly backward field when it comes
to digital integration into scholarship. And it is certainly one of the
fields I don't think we will see lots of citations to Wikipedia in anytime
soon. Naval History is one of the worst subfields for digital integration as
well (most of the journals published in the field are not available
digitally yet). Any sources published digitally outside of a pay wall would
be infinitely useful for scholarship. That would also be useful for vetting
of Wikipedia facts, instead of the content being inserted once, it could be
refered to for verifiability for however long it is needed.
Alex Stinson
User:Sadads