On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 1:24 AM, Michael Bimmler <mbimmler(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 10:13 AM,
<WJhonson(a)aol.com> wrote:
Other than just nay-saying my opinions, with your
own opinions, do you
have
a *positive* opinion on the topic?
Which is whether our BLP's in general suffer from "low citation quality"
?
There's a certain glamour in just nullifying someone else's position, but
I
don't think that's going to propel us
forward.
See, I am not going to express a general opinion on "citation quality is
low" or "citation quality is high" because I would need to closely look
at
a
few random BLP and a few "high-profile" BLP articles and (for me
personally)
assess every source there to be able to make a statement on that.
If you want a "positive opinion" on that: I do not having a problem with
Wikipedia being "academic" at all, indeed I very much support this. Mind
you, this doesn't mean that we should try to write as"academically and
unintelligibly (to the general public) as possible, but I'm referring to
the
sources we use etc. - I think we should not lower our standards just to
attract more readers.
I think it's important to note, however, that "academic coverage" is not
and
should not be a prerequisite for something being covered in Wikipedia.
Thinking of Wikipedia as an academic project in the exclusive sense, where
we would remove things which are otherwise notable but not covered by the
topical equivalent of peer reviewed primary and secondary sources, is a
mistake.
Not taking advantage of legitimate good academic source material out there
is a mistake. Not writing articles in an encyclopedic manner is a mistake.
But trying to turn this into an academic project is an equally bad mistake.
We're not an academic project - the core goal of the project is open
contribution and collaboration. The statement "We should improve quality"
is not equivalent to "We should become an academic project".
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com