On 12/4/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net>
wrote:
Honest and thorough fact checkers are not about to
cut corners by
avoiding a trip to the library if they feel it is important enough. I
have frequently had suspicions about citations. Nothing stops us from
asking another Wikipedian to check it out when we don't have access to
convenient material. For some going to a well-stocked library may be a
100 mile drive. Clicking on a link is obviously convenient, but it
could also promote tunnel vision and diminish the possibility of editors
looking for alternative sources that may view the issue differently.
So overall do you think that, copyright issues aside, the idea of
making snippets of source material available for verification is a bad
thing, or just not a very good thing?
There is an essential contradiction here. I have no complaint about
adding quotes or snippets, but that is not verification. The source
gives us a context which is more than a mere snippet. We should want
verification to be more than a rote exercise.
If we only use snippets you're probably right in saying that the
copyright problem will go away.
Ec