David Goodman wrote:
perhaps it will soon be just as likely and authoritative that people will write this material directly here. To think we are always going to remain a secondary or tertiary medium is perhaps looking a little narrowly. I know we're trying to resist this, but things will proceed in any case. Or, if we resist strongly enough, they will proceed in such a way that we may soon be forgotten except for the specialists--like usenet, perhaps.
Indeed. The No Original Research principle was developed to deal with a specific problem; it has never been a core principle. When we get away from writing about modern industrial societies we need to recognize that these other countries just to not have the intellectual and literary infrastructures. India is still relatively well-off in this regard, but there are English speaking countries like Sierra Leone where recent history has not been at all kind to the infrastructure.
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