On 8/11/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
As someone who is a part of a culture which is not so good covered on Internet (Serbian), I think that I am completely relevant to talk about this issue.
If the only sources available about a subject are in the Serbian language, there is absolutely nothing wrong with using them as references.
It was about any source, not about sources related to Serbian culture. Of course that language should not play any role in relevancy of a source.
In the contrast to UK, USA or Germany, Serbia doesn't have so developed Internet and so many people well introduced in Internet technologies. For example, it is usual that it is not possible to check data about some municipality because municipality doesn't have a website or website is saying just "This is a website of municipality XX, president of municipality is YY and you may send an email to webmaster@municipalityXX (municipality in Serbia has similar size to county in USA and it is a couple of times bigger then municipality in France).
So, the point was that it is much harder to find some reference for a topic related to Serbia then for a topic related for Germany. No matter is it in English, Serbian or German.
Yes. Actually it cites what others say, not what they think. The term "scientific method" is misleading. We cite what people say, and thus establish the meta-fact that they said it; we are not in a position to judge whether what they say is true. That's how we diverge from scientific method.
We don't diverge from scientific method, but we only have limits because of the type of scientific product. Someone who makes synthetic work shouldn't deal with experiments, too, but with arranging previous experiments into synthetic work. However, both of examples (encyclopedia and synthetic work) are using scientific method.
It would be good if someone makes a good article (in Wikipedia name space or in the main name space) about methods of encyclopedic work. If there is article like this, we wouldn't spend a lot of time explaining what Wikipedia is.
There is a place for standard reference works. These are works that contain the basic facts about a subject or a person's life. Whether you agree or disagree with what Tolstoy and Broz stood for, there is unlikely to be a dispute about where they were born. We should not need detailed repetitive sources about such things.
This was just an example for the statement that we need a source for every statement and not only for not so well known statements. We need a reference for Tolstoy and Broz as well as we need a reference for Queen Victoria.
BTW, for every person born in former Yugoslavia before 1980 it is "well known truth" that Broz was born in Kumrovec and no one of such persons would ask for a reference. But, we are making a general encyclopedia, not an encyclopedia for particular culture.