-----Original Message----- From: Mak [mailto:makwik@gmail.com] Sent: Saturday, June 30, 2007 12:18 PM To: 'English Wikipedia' Subject: [WikiEN-l] A much neglected aspect of quality - Bibliographies I see Wikipedia cited more and more as a possible first step for serious research. I have seen more and more people suggest that Wikipedia should encompass all or most of the articles included in specialist encyclopedias, such as the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (my personal favorite). I have also seen many more calls for working on quality of articles, rather than quantity. I see a major lack in terms of using WP for deeper research, rather than quick information gathering, when comparing Wikipedia to these specialist encyclopedias. This lack is in well developed and defined bibliographies. I am not talking about people citing their sources and sticking them in reference sections, which I also think is important. I'm talking about a limited review of the literature, mentioning which works are considered seminal, which are standard, which give the best overview for the uninitiated, basically a good bibliography which is not too bloated and which is not too biased. We frequently talk about how students should not use Wikipedia as a sole source, but as a starting point. I see the best way for Wikipedia to be a starting point is to give the basic information, and then point people to the very best information. The best books or journal articles will not necessarily be the ones which were to hand when a person was first writing the article, or when someone was getting rid of {{fact}} templates. In the best of all possible worlds they were, but it's more likely they were the most easily accessible, and may have been online resources which were not as good as what would be available in your local library or with a subscription to JSTOR or similar. I would like to encourage everyone to think about how to create great bibliographies, especially for subjects where you could easily be snowed under with relevant works, or where the best literature is not necessarily obvious. And some questions about Bibliographies - should we create them in separate pages or namespaces so they can be better controlled and saved from spammers? Is ISBN really the best way to identify and find books? Should we think about a partnership with OCLC/WorlCat or some other database so that people can easily find the books mentioned locally? Can we simplify our templates for citing books, or should we make them even more complex so they fit with the MARC standards <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARC_standards> ? Sorry for the long rant, but this is something which has been bothering me about Wikipedia for the last year and a half, and where I don't feel like much progress has been made in terms of quality. Makemi _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l