On 8/21/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:

Ah, now, I didn't say that. Note "compared to anything else written about them". We should have good, informative articles; so should the newspaper which mentions the organisation, or the biographical dictionary which has a paragraph on the person.

But we shouldn't be the only ones publishing the story about so-and-so's messy divorce. We shouldn't be the only ones pulling together this court record and that advertisment and another press release to say that the company has systematically defrauded its customers.

If we can influence people to think, that's good. But if we can influence them to think where no other published source would influence them to think... are we really being an encyclopedia, republishing knowledge, or is this a sign we're getting into original research?

Oh, sorry, looks like I did distort your meaning a bit. Yes, I agree with all that - we should not be too far out of line from other sources. We can definitely achieve things by bringing together material that two different types of publications would publish - in fact, that's probably one of our major strengths, the fact that we shamelessly quote from scientific journals, popular magazines, blogs[1] and newspapers in the same article.

Steve [1] Yeah, yeah, some people think blogs are uncitable.