Steve Block wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
The Renaissance Wikipedian who is not associated with a university has to make do with what he can find. If all he can find is internet material it will shape and limit his perceptions. Fact checking should be one of our jobs, but doing that effectively depends on having access to information.
I have been meaning to ask this. Has it ever been explored that the Foundation look at getting some subscriptions to archives and the like and allowing a reference team access to those subscriptions to do some fact checking?
I would be inclined to hold off on any kind of organized fact checking until the stable version issued is sorted out. That way we would have a way of recording which facts have been checked and which have not, and how much.
Your idea is constructive but I think it only scratches the surface of the challenge. A lot of the really useful and important material is still on paper. How do we choose the "reference team"? It would need to be big enough to handle what is already a massive job.
Ec