Lars Aronsson wrote:
We could learn a lot from the experience of traditional encyclopedia editors over the last few centuries, but very few of us would take the time to do so. I've read a biography of Denis Diderot, and "The Professor and the Madman", and have a small collection of old (Swedish) encyclopedia and dictionaries, but that's about all. One conclusion that I've drawn is that they all used to borrow facts and ideas from each other, without too much worry for copyright infringement.
That may be because one can't copyright facts and ideas.
I notice that we keep copying public domain text from 1911, which is usually so out of date that it must be completely rewritten. This is a waste of time, and makes our own articles wrong. We should look at the 2002 encyclopaedia and completely rewrite *that*.
-- Toby Bartels toby+wikipedia-l@math.ucr.edu
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