Charles Matthews wrote:
dpbsmith@verizon.net wrote
Thought number 2: regardless of the legal defensibility of the use of some
other encyclopedia's list of articles as a guideline for shaping Wikipedia's, it strikes me as being intellectually lazy and a bit dishonest.
It's a fair point,
It would be a fair point, if it weren't a complete and total straw man argument. No one has suggested that we do any such thing, and I have spoken against it several times.
Wikipedia Print articles will be selected by an internal process that we're going to iron out as we get a better grasp on the size requirements and exactly what we're going to need to do.
Wikipedia the website is going to be comprehensive in every sense of the word, meaning that of course we will eventually have articles covering everything that's in every other encyclopedia ever written plus more. It's totally and completely legitimate for us to rely on reference works -- including other encylopedias, all of them -- to ensure our goal of the widest possible coverage of every possible encyclopedia topic.
--Jimbo