On 8/21/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)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.