Sarah wrote:
On 12/19/06, charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
Sarah wrote
Any public library can order material that's
in a regular academic
library.
Sorry - any public library in Kerala, Kampala or even Lima can order up anything
from any academic library? Do remember that this is a global project. The
'populist' idea that anybody should be able to fact-check anything rather founders
on the reality that it at most refers to about 5% of the world population, selected just
about entirely on wealth.
We are really doing the opposite: making the cream of reliable-source material actually
globally available whereever there is a decent internet connection.
Charles, anyone in the English-speaking world should be able easily to
fact-check our material, and this is the English-language Wikipedia,
so that has to be our priority.
Two of the three places that he mentioned are in the English-speaking
world. I have no problem with the priority cited, nor with other
wikipedias having parallel policies.
Your argument seems to be that because
everyone in the world can't fact-check it, no one should be able to,
and that we should instead leave the writing and research to
self-selected Wikipiedia "experts," many of whom are anonymous and may
have no expertise at all, or if they do, may not be highly regarded by
other experts in the field.
I don't read that interpretation into the above at all; there is
certainly no mention of experts.
I agree wholeheartedly that we should make the cream
of
reliable-source material globally available, but I strongly disagree
with allowing Wikipedians to insert their own opinions and
interpretations between those sources and our readers.
We all disagree with generally allowing personal opinions. The
disagreement is in what constitutes personal opinion. I do not consider
it personal opinion to say that we have not found the information in a
specified range of sources. Such a comment is a partial step toward
sourcing, and may be as much as can be done at the moment. Full
sourcing may require the combined efforts of several editors with access
to a different range of sources. If we disallow partial sourcing it
could be more difficult to ever have a collaborative result that is the
sum of these partial sourcings.
Ec