Hoi,
Jimbo spoke about his impression that people want to know the
qualifications of authors. This has been discussed to deatch so I will
not comment. :)
Listening to the show I heard something else, it was put forward that
people take wikipedia as the "gospel truth" either because they do not
have more time or because they still do not have the skills to do some
proper research. Jimbo dit put it very well on the show that the
intention of an encyclopedia is to cover the basics of a subject. Having
thought about it for a day, I came up with this conclusion: we emphasise
on providing the sources for the articles written. This is cool for as
far as it goes. However the emphasis should be on where the reader
should go next. It is much more productive to state what and where good
further reading can be found. The point is that the source for a fact
does not necessarily make good reading even though it proves a factoid.
It is much more productive to show where to go next.
The crux is that the mentioning of sources make a Wikipedia article
credible. It does not point where to go for further research or
information. To me this is distinctly different and it is much more
important that we encourage people to learn more.
Thanks,
GerardM