On Tuesday 22 November 2005 08:31, Jimmy Wales wrote:
That's exactly what I always say. We strive to be (and sometimes, but not yet nearly as much as we'd like) Britannica or better quality. But even at that level of quality, frankly, it's just not appropriate to cite any encyclopedia at the university level. That's not the role of an encyclopedia in the process.
I find this argument about usage in school settings to be (interestingly) bogus and encouraging of plagiarism. Clearly, encyclopedias have a function in the schools: encyclopedia = circle of learning -- and paideia, is something you do as a pais, a child (Fowler 1997:15). Even at the graduate level IMHO. Pang (1998) -- even before the WP -- noted that this is was EB's big market. The Britannica CD had extremely strong sales in the home market, and with public schools and libraries with limited Internet access. Institutions were the largest subscriber to the Britannica online. And new CD editions were typical released about now, at the start of the Christmas season. It's interesting EB markets itself to this community, claims authority, but also plays this dance of acceding to not being cited.
In any case, some might say students should use Britannica, but not Wikipedia; or cite one's use of an encyclopedia, or not. I think students should use what is most appropriate and cite it.
[[ http://reagle.org/joseph/blog/culture/wikipedia/usage-and-citation?showcomme... ... If a reference work points me to a more authoritative source, should I at least not acknowledge this bit of help? Particularly, if I'm more likely to be influenced by the summary provided by the reference? Additionally why would any book among the thousands published a year be any more authoritative than a general reference work on the sole basis of its form? I could compile a multipage bibliography of books denying the Holocaust, but find few -- if any -- general-purpose reference works that did the same. The generality of the reference work insulates it from partisan pressures because it must appeal to a wide audience over many topics. It is unlikely that neo-Nazis would publish a useful general reference work for the sole purpose of shifting articles on Jews towards their perspective. However, this is not to say that reference works have no bias. Only, that if we look at the formal genre of a text only -- which is what this rule does -- any given reference work is less likely to be "eccentric" than any book taken at random. ... ]]
Not citing reference works serves the pretense of the academic and the marketing of the masked authority of traditional reference work publishers.