"David Goodman" wrote
My view is that it would be a good idea to find all such text and remove it, replacing it by something modern.
It is actually more wiki-like to proceed piecemeal, editing old encyclopedia text into shape in numerous passes. There is certainly a serious process of "digestion" to be done. My experience of the typical old article - say a biography - is that the basic steps are
- create sections and address logical flow; - tighten up where verbose (a common issue for old material); - correct obvious POV; - use more contemporary language.
This gives a good base. Then, if possible, update quite lightly - a recent book as reference, some links to contemporary scholarship. The combined effect is usually to give an acceptable article.
For reasons of scale - there are thousands upon thousands of missing topics for which an acceptable article is what is required first - I'm an eventualist about replacing the old stuff. And as usual, one should remember that creating an article that is well linked in to the rest of WP promotes people's interest, leading to others working on the text.
Charles
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Doing it part by part is certainly OK, as long as it gets done;, though I wouldn't oppose an effort to mark such text if a bot could do it. what is not OK is the attitude that if we have poor sources, we should leave them alone. Certainly we need new articles; they are likely to be of a higher standard if the existing articles are of a higher standard also. And the tightening up of articles that Charles mentions below has a strong tendency to remove old text from the EB, and certainly from the old CE, which has an unmistakable florid style.
The attitude I really protest against is when people defend the keeping of superseded sources instead of modern ones, even when good ones are proposed, or naively use such sources to add to existing articles. I regard the start of a new article by carrying over old EB text just like I would from a web home page that happened to be PD--the text is equally unlikely to be suitable for an encyclopedia.
On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 5:47 AM, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
"David Goodman" wrote
My view is that it would be a good idea to find all such text and remove it, replacing it by something modern.
It is actually more wiki-like to proceed piecemeal, editing old encyclopedia text into shape in numerous passes. There is certainly a serious process of "digestion" to be done. My experience of the typical old article - say a biography - is that the basic steps are
- create sections and address logical flow;
- tighten up where verbose (a common issue for old material);
- correct obvious POV;
- use more contemporary language.
This gives a good base. Then, if possible, update quite lightly - a recent book as reference, some links to contemporary scholarship. The combined effect is usually to give an acceptable article.
For reasons of scale - there are thousands upon thousands of missing topics for which an acceptable article is what is required first - I'm an eventualist about replacing the old stuff. And as usual, one should remember that creating an article that is well linked in to the rest of WP promotes people's interest, leading to others working on the text.
Charles
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This is often plausible with EB 1911, where the main issue is the flowery prose. The other problem, though, with using old encyclopaedia text as a base is the factual accuracy of such texts. I've found so many horrible mistakes in them, usually on classical music articles. And CE 1913 just contains outright lies.
Ergo, these things shouldn't really be used unless you have a modern RS with which to check all the facts. But if you have that...why not use it instead?
CM
Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.
From: charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com To: wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2008 10:47:29 +0100 Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] semi-new essay
"David Goodman" wrote
My view is that it would be a good idea to find all such text and remove it, replacing it by something modern.
It is actually more wiki-like to proceed piecemeal, editing old encyclopedia text into shape in numerous passes. There is certainly a serious process of "digestion" to be done. My experience of the typical old article - say a biography - is that the basic steps are
- create sections and address logical flow;
- tighten up where verbose (a common issue for old material);
- correct obvious POV;
- use more contemporary language.
This gives a good base. Then, if possible, update quite lightly - a recent book as reference, some links to contemporary scholarship. The combined effect is usually to give an acceptable article.
For reasons of scale - there are thousands upon thousands of missing topics for which an acceptable article is what is required first - I'm an eventualist about replacing the old stuff. And as usual, one should remember that creating an article that is well linked in to the rest of WP promotes people's interest, leading to others working on the text.
Charles
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On 10/9/08, Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk wrote:
Ergo, these things shouldn't really be used unless you have a modern RS with which to check all the facts. But if you have that...why not use it instead?
Because people want to copy and paste something, and the modern source is not free.
—C.W.
This is true. But {{sobuyit}}. You can get amazing stuff off abebooks for absolutely peanuts.
CM
Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2008 15:58:32 -0500 From: charlottethewebb@gmail.com To: wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] semi-new essay
On 10/9/08, Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk wrote:
Ergo, these things shouldn't really be used unless you have a modern RS with which to check all the facts. But if you have that...why not use it instead?
Because people want to copy and paste something, and the modern source is not free.
—C.W.
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On 10/9/08, Christiano Moreschi moreschiwikiman@hotmail.co.uk wrote:
This is true. But {{sobuyit}}. You can get amazing stuff off abebooks for absolutely peanuts.
Sorry, I meant "free" as in public domain or otherwise GFDL-compatible.
—C.W.