On 2/27/07, T P t0m0p0@gmail.com wrote:
On 2/27/07, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
So you are saying that if a field is completely forgotten or outmoded, even if we have the secondary sources to back us up and our encyclopaedia is not on paper, we should not be including articles on that field? I'd like
some
concrete examples - but then again, these are all hypotheticals since nobody's ever written an encyclopaedia and published it in realtime.
Then
again, could you perhaps point to some topics fifteen years old which
you
think would not be worthy of inclusion in an encyclopaedia today, but would have been included in Wikipedia by experts at the peak of the topics' fame?
I think our reliance on secondary sources does help a lot.
On the other hand, a lot of pop culture is ephemeral. Minor entertainers and video games come to mind. Do we need an article on Michael Richards' racist tirade? Britney Spears in rehab? Do we really want articles on the latest Paris fashions, each year and every year?
I suppose such information has a certain historical value, but it doesn't fit in with my conception of what an encyclopedia should cover.
Adam
Well, I believe such incidents would be included in an encyclopaedia of Michael Richards or Britney Spears-related things. And certainly, biographies written about them in the future would mention the incidents. I don't think they make a good example, though, because any articles about such incidents would almost certainly be merged into another relevant article - typically the main article on the celebrity in question - because there's simply not much you can say about them. And as for the latest Paris fashions, we have an article for every year of the Oscars - why not an article for every year of a Paris fashion show, as long as the sources are there?
Also, remember the great thing about Wikipedia is that information can both be put in and taken out at the click of a mouse. If (let's say) this information some day truly becomes an embarassment to WP, we can delete it - and at the same time, the articles would have served their purpose throughout their lifetime, by being a resource for the readers of an era where the information was considered relevant and appropriate for an encyclopaedia or other general reference tertiary source.
Johnleemk