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

[Toby Bartels]

Lars Aronsson wrote:

>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.

That may be because one can't copyright facts and ideas.

I notice that we keep copying public domain text from 1911,
which is usually so out of date that it must be completely rewritten.
This is a waste of time, and makes our own articles wrong.
We should look at the 2002 encyclopaedia and completely rewrite *that*.


-- Toby Bartels
   <toby+wikipedia-l at math.ucr.edu>