On Thu, 28 Dec 2006 17:16:09 -0500, Jeff Raymond
<jeff.raymond(a)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)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG