On 10/19/06, Matthew Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/17/06, Anthony wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
It's also a waste of time to state obvious facts in an encyclopedia
article.
Obvious depends on prior knowledge; this is why obvious facts end up in an encyclopedia, because for someone out there, they're not obvious.
(minor nitpick, agree with the rest of what you wrote)
Looking back at the example, I guess the sort of thing like "Thomas Jefferson was the third president" does belong in an encyclopedia, and I can see how such a fact could be considered "obvious".
At the same time, I'd put this in the category of those facts which absolutely should be contained somewhere in the reference material, but need not be referenced by an individual footnote.
What's more controversial is "obvious" facts about public perceptions, such as the example Jimmy was talking about.
"Critics of the GPL often describe it as being "viral"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft#Is_copyleft_.22viral.22.3F, based on the GPL terms that all derived works must in turn be licensed under the GPL." (from [[GNU General Public License]])
What should we do with that? {{fact}} tag it? Remove it? Leave it as is? Personally I'd say it should be removed. I just removed, without logging in, the whole paragraph, which was nothing more than speculation regarding this "perception". Let's see what happens.
Anthony