On May 19, 2006, at 3:10 AM, Peter Mackay wrote:
Having an
up-to-date comprehensive encyclopedia using
volunteer labor is a very big task :)
No argument there, and Wikipedia is a stunning achievement by
anybody's
standards. However I was thinking that the sort of people who are
capable of
ensuring that legal articles are accurate, uptodate and dependent are
usually busy and highly paid. Asking senior lawyers to work on a
legalopedia
in their time off is a step up from asking Star Trek fans to
compile lists
of trivia.
Yeah, and the same for asking knowledgeable computer scientists,
mathemeticans, or philosophers to contribute. Then again, many
lawyers work pro bono giving actual legal advice and representation—
certainly editing Wikipedia is easier than this.
Compiling useful legal articles and then keeping them
up to date isn't
something your average editor can do. How do we check credentials, for
example?
Non-lawyers can still cite lawyers, if lawyers write and publish
these sorts of resources (law school textbooks perhaps?).
--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch