On 10/30/05, Brown, Darin Darin.Brown@enmu.edu wrote:
In the case of research papers, though, it wouldn't be the mathematician at all...since the mathematician (or anyone writing for an academic journal, if I understand correctly) doesn't actually personally have the copyright...the publisher does.
It doesn't matter -- that is just assignment of copyright. The question is about whether a copyright would be generated in the first place.
Well, there are many people with "real jobs" here, and it's easy to verify that. I am not talking about research-level material, I'm talking more about basic skills, undergraduate-, or at most, beginning graduate-level material. In the case of math, I really think there's less to worry about. If a true crank does post some nonsense or even half-nonsense, it will get viewed by many people quickly.
It's actually not easy to verify that. It's easier to just point to a published resource by a reputable press, which is a lot harder to fake. We reach outside the internet for our verification, in the end, because we know that the internet is unreliable. It's an interesting model of digital epistemology, is it not?
We allow people here to correct grammar and sentence structure, or at least check that it's correct, without them having "certified" authority.
Of course, in general. But when there are real disputes, where the answer is not self-evident to most editors (such as the use of "there" vs. "their"), we turn to manuals of style, the Oxford English Dictionary, etc. You see this all the time in disputes over style and definitions. Again, the need for citation only comes from the problem of dispute, and if the problem is legitimate (i.e. it is not one crank against the consensus of everyone else who looks at it) then we turn to external verification. I am pretty sure you can apply this logic to all subjects.
FF