Mark, very interesting comments. Just out of curiosity -- are you an
information scientist, librarian, academic, or none of the above? :-)
FN
PS: I don't mean to be poking fun. Just curious to know how different
segments would see this issue. BTW, I'm a journalist, in India (Goa).
On 27/02/07, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote:
This seems strangely self-contradictory, although to
be fair that might
be the fault of the article writer instead of Ms. Matei's. It certainly
isn't how I, or anyone else I know, uses or would recommend using
Wikipedia. You resort to a paid professional *after* Wikipedia, not
*before*. Wikipedia is particularly good as a first glance, giving you
search terms you might not have heard of, pointeres to other related
topics, and in good articles an overview of the subject. And I'd argue
that unless people know what they're doing, a search of LexisNexis or
ProQuest (or Google Scholar) is likely to be much worse than browsing
the Wikipedia article as a first resource. A good Wikipedia article
puts all these sources in context, and so is infinitely better than the
raw listing of sources as a first reference. These databases are giant
archives of primary sources, *not* generally reviewed, interrelated, or
usefully commented upon. Honestly this part, especially with its focus
on paid professionals and pay-access archives, strikes me as a bit of
turf defense.
The suggestions further down about how to spot potentially questionable
Wikipedia articles are good ones, though.
--
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