On Wed, Jul 4, 2012 at 12:38 AM, Marc A. Pelletier <marc(a)uberbox.org> wrote:
On 03/07/2012 7:04 PM, Andreas Kolbe wrote:
What would a Wikipedia look like that did not
make use of press sources?
It
would look a hell of a lot more like an encyclopedia. Thousands of silly
arguments would never arise. Thousands of apposite criticisms of Wikipedia
would never arise. These are good things.
Unfortunately, such a Wikipedia would also have vastly impoverished
coverage of popular culture and current affairs. The articles on Lady Gaga
and Barack Obama would be years behind events; the articles on the Japan
earthquakes, which I believe Wikipedia was widely praised for, would only
now begin to be written, articles on many towns and villages would lack
colour and detail.
Well, if I were suddenly named dictator of Wikipedia, I'd probably suggest
that a "recent event" namespace be created, where popular media were
acceptable sources, and make them verbotten in mainspace. Mainspace
articles might have a hatnote with a link to the other namespace along the
lines of "for recent, less authoritative coverage".
We'd have our cake and eat it too.
How would you deal with biographies of people like heads of state, who are
subjects of serious academic study as well as daily news articles?