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.
Indeed. Jefferson was the third president, sure, but I would have a tough time naming, say, the first three Australian prime ministers. Qualitatively there's no difference between these questions. By extension, I wouldn't know the difference if someone vandalized these articles in a non-obvious way; this is why good sources for obvious facts are useful. We write for English speakers and learners around the world, at all possible levels of knowledge.
I figure for everything I write about, there's someone out there who might want to know more, and if I can't provide outside sources I've no business writing about it. I know this argument has gone round and round in circles for years regarding undocumented facts of life in various cultures, but I am talking about the other 95% of information in the encyclopedia. Let's not forget that an encyclopedia is by definition a tertiary source, something that makes connections to an outside world of knowledge. I wish there was a culture of making notes about sources, no matter how bad those sources are, on the talk pages of articles as information was added -- better to know that someone was adding information they gained through personal knowledge, or because it is "common sense," or because they copied from another article, than to not have any information at all about where a particular statement comes from.
-- phoebe / brassratgirl