From: "Andre Engels" engelsAG@t-online.de
I disagree. We are to state that there is criticism, and what the criticism consists of. But there is no need to get into detail to prove those criticisms or spend two paragraphs per criticism to give examples.
This is related to the point I was trying to make on textbook-l discussion http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/textbook-l/2003-October/000522.html regarding the development of historiography and the varying POVs of historians that are considered valid but not conclusory by other historians of differing methodological approaches to social science research. If one is going to include all these different perspectives in a textbook that is only going to be used by one of these approaches the book will fail in its purpose of being a textbook of a particular type of history. The arguments are very similar, you cannot include every point of view, but just reference it. In an encyclopedia that is unproblematic, as I agree, you are not writing to include every point of view but reference it, an encyclopedia is not just a collection of texts, it is a synthesis of knowledge. A textbook is more of a collection of knowledge, and many knowledge theorists acknowledge that knowledge may have a point of view and still be useful.
Alex756