On 5/18/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote:
...
This isn't to say that I think *Wikipedia* should
work that way.
After all, Wikipedia has a long history of running completely
different from that, and a relatively successful history too
(certainly volume-wise, and the average quality isn't too bad). What
I'm saying is that providing enough sources to write a decent
encyclopedia article isn't very hard for any but the most obscure
subjects, whether you've been to university or not. Providing sources
for an encyclopedia article that's already written, on the other hand
- that can be hard or nearly impossible (or even impossible if the
article is unverifiable).
Anyway, to bring this out of theory and back to reality, is there
anything I can do with those two references I found on bouchon? Put
them in the ==References== section, even though no one actually used
the source? Put them on the talk page? Maybe we need a "notes" page
which can be organized a little bit better than the talk page.
....
Anthony
Actually, this runs contrary to my experience. The more obscure a
subject, the easier it is for me to write a decent article
(referencing it heavily) on the subject- simply because it is feasible
for me to read through and absorb a sizeable fraction of the English
literature on it within a few weeks; for my [[Fujiwara no Teika]] and
[[Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity]] articles, I've read at
least a third of the recent English literature on them. Now, it would
be utterly impossible for me to do so on a subject such as [[George W.
Bush]]- I'd still be reading the work of a few years ago decades from
now (to exaggerate a little bit).
~maru