On 11/08/2011 23:03, Andreas Kolbe wrote:
There was an article in the New York Times a few days ago, on a related theme:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/business/media/a-push-to-redefine-knowledg...
One of its arguments was that there are whole cultures that lack published "reliable sources".
Which is true. I think though that this argument about "ethnographic" content in WP is rather an old one. There was a time before WP:V was cast-iron policy, you know, and some of the implications were probably brought up in 2003-4 (the archives of this list may reveal this). Does it matter? Not so much, I think. The Web rewards sites doing one thing well; and compiling material from RS as "one thing" covers an awful lot of useful ground.
We tend to think of such cultures in set ways: the "street", or picturesque because not mainstream. I most recently encountered this constraint, though, in the form of an article on games to play on a car journey. Most families don't document their own "oral culture". I think the argument tends to forget that there can be wikis that are not Wikipedia.
Charles