On Thu, 28 Dec 2006 17:16:09 -0500, Jeff Raymond jeff.raymond@internationalhouseofbacon.com wrote:
Not to mention a good academic paper has less stringent "reliable" standards than a Wikipedia entry.
No, I don't think it does
At least in my experience it does. Of course, YMMV, bt I wrote plenty of history papers that did quite well with "lower" standards than we allow.
Like I said, an academic paper positively encourages original research, Wikipedia outright bans it. So it's not surprising we require sources which have passed the threshold of publication. But I don't think our standards are higher than for academic articles (as in: articles in the academic journals), they are just somewhat different. Actually getting a paper published in the academic press is non-trivial, after all, and we should certainly not confuse that with the standards required of undergraduate papers, which are of course a lot lower.
- or if it does it's not relevant.
I think it's relevant. We're putting otrselves ahead of academia and eliminating otherwise reliable sourcing as a result.
No, we're eliminating original research, which is positively encouraged in academia. Indeed, you'd be unlikely to get an academic article published without at least some novel synthesis (although WP articles are comparable with review articles, and in both cases the threshold for sources is much the same).
Guy (JzG)