[Wikipedia-l] Years in review and the need for editorial judgement

[Lars Aronsson]

On Mon, 22 Jul 2002, Brion VIBBER wrote:
> The difference is "every encyclopedia and newspaper *editor*". We're
> giving every crank off the street his own shot at the presses and
> politely asking him to clean up after the mess the last crank left.

I agree that this is a big difference.  Here everybody is an editor, with
very little room for training.  (Like throwing people into the water,
hoping they will learn to swim.)

But I think the need for objectivity (NPOV) is universal, no matter who
the editor is.

We could learn a lot from the experience of traditional encyclopedia
editors over the last few centuries, but very few of us would take the
time to do so.  I've read a biography of Denis Diderot, and "The
Professor and the Madman", and have a small collection of old (Swedish)
encyclopedia and dictionaries, but that's about all.  One conclusion that
I've drawn is that they all used to borrow facts and ideas from each
other, without too much worry for copyright infringement.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/  http://elektrosmog.nu/  http://susning.nu/