On Sep 16, 2004, at 2:04 AM, Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" jwales@wikia.com wrote:
I would put it a different way. "The needs of a general purpose, general audience encyclopedia differ from the needs of a professional reference work, so we should move forward in exploring solutions that meet the needs of both users while minimizing duplication of efforts."
That could still be interpreted as meaning that [[biology of ...]] and [[geology of ...]] articles should not be hosted on Wikipedia and instead on separate projects. I am *very* much against that and don't agree with usage of the term 'general audience' since that implies (to me at least) a forking of content based on detail alone. Sidenote: A general encyclopedia is one that is not specialized; since we don't have size limits that is a statement without much distinction since we can - and do - go into detail on a great many topics
- just not all on the same page (and with summaries in appropriate
places).
Let me put this differently still. Would you prescribe a medication out of wikipedia? Or perform a surgical procedure from it? Would you check drug interactions from it?
Articles that people are going to stake their professional reputations on, or base new work on. That is, works that must carry authority, have different needs from general reference, and cannot simply be watchdogged on the "well if the article is important someone will monitor it" basis. This isn't knock on general wiki editing, this is recognizing that as more and more money rides on internet information, there will be more and more incentive to skew the results. This has already happened in many professional fields, and many professional journals out there in the paper world.
Dealing with the more complex issues of authority, credibility and accuracy represent a large step forward for wikimedia, they are serious issues and need to be addressed. I am firmly on the side of the believers that they can be addressed within this framework. But it isn't merely a matter of content. It is a matter of intent. Wiki clearly states "no original research" for wikipedia, it is using consensus to slowly reach the state of "settled knowledge", with coverage of POVs within that context. Any professional quality project will have to hit that moving target which is the state of research. The paper world has these problems, and in fact, is right now thrashing around under the weight of them. Electronic knowledge offers ways of solving these problems in a better way. But that is very different from making these problems disappear.
It's a question of what is called "apparatus". Footnoting is apparatus, so are textual notes - these are means by which people who read check and use that which is written. Wiki needs to begin developing more sophisticated apparatus for professional users. In turn, such articles will feed, not fork, the main project. The apparatus of bibliography, footnote, reproducibility of tables, textual analysis and documentation didn't get created at once for paper - it took decades. Ignoring the question won't make it go away here.