Fred Bauder wrote:
Including only material in an article which is within the accepted canon of
knowledge is one of the Wikipedia editing guidelines. I think it means facts which are accepted by scholars in the field.
I couldn't find such a statement in any of the editing guidelines. The only place I did find such a phrase was in Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not (and I edited it out of that page, hopefully leaving a less problematic expression of the sentiment it conveyed).
As to what "accepted canon of knowledge" might mean, I feel that part of the problem is associating it with the standards of academia. Does something have to be accepted by "scholars" in order to qualify as human knowledge, and what qualifications are required to be a scholar? Again, I think it's easy to reach a conclusion from this approach that we should restrict Wikipedia contributions to people who have certain "qualifications", whatever those may be. Also, it's worth noting that Wikipedia covers many fields in which academic scholars have very little interest.
--Michael Snow
wikipedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org