[Foundation-l] A prerequisite for the neutral, notable sum of all human knowledge

[Ray Saintonge]

Brian J Mingus wrote:
> The WMF mission is to provide free knowledge to the world. Wikipedia, in
> particular, hopes to summarize all notable topics into a neutral sum.
>
> Accomplishing this goal means Wikipedia an the WMF will have to evolve.
> Consider the implications of the mission: Every single work that contains
> notable topics must have complete coverage in Wikipedia. While every article
> need not cite every work, every article must accurately summarize every
> notable opinion of every notable topic in every work.
>   

In its broad strokes I must say from the outset that I strongly support 
the WikiCite notion.  Nevertheless, I think that there are a lot of 
pitfalls in the development of this idea.  To begin with your use of the 
term "notable" is somewhat disquieting.  Over the years the notability 
debates in Wikipedia have often been long and rancorous.  We would do 
well to avoid that kind of debate in favour of of the simpler criterion 
of prior publication.  Yes, that will result in the inclusion of some 
material of questionable notability, but most of these have limited 
growth potential, and natural selection will quickly push them to back 
corners.

(Very off-topic aside: My spell-checker just suggested that I replace 
"Wikipedia" with "Pediatric"!!!!)
> Some have interpreted the role of the proposed citations project as one of
> merely centralizing the citations that already exist in Wikipedia. The
> mission, however, calls for a broader vision. This new project should have a
> bibliography of all works since that is the scope of the mission. The nature
> of knowledge further calls for us to understand the links between items
> containing knowledge, their categorical context and their abstract
> relationships. This broad, unambiguous view of works and their topics will
> allow us to explicate them neutrally and select only the most notable ones
> for inclusion. It will, in the limit of time, prevent our judgment from
> being clouded by the limited, local view of knowledge that we currently
> have.
>   

I agree with the broadness of the mission, and that it should serve 
something much bigger than support for other Wikimedia projects.  I 
still don't think that "neutral explication" should be a part of the 
mission.  That is a users' function beyond the bibliographical one of 
showing what there is.  Readers still need to know about the oddball 
stuff, even if the only future interest will be in relation to 
chronicling the paths not taken in the history of science.
> The proposed new project has the following features: It is a bibliography of
> all kinds of works that fall under the umbrella of the WMF mission. Works
> and collections of works contain disambiguating user contributed text and
> media. Works can link to other works. Works come together to form
> categories. People can use this site as their personal bibliography,
> encouraging participation of a much greater community of users and curation
> of the bibliography them.
>   

Absolutely.  It's not just the monographs, it's also the periodical 
articles that need to be referenced.  For a publication like 
"Gentleman's Magazine" that lasted from 1731 to 1907 that's a lot of 
material to index.
> There are many challenges to creating a project of such scale, but in order
> to accomplish our goals of freeing knowledge we must strive to collect it
> and understand it in a more nuanced way than we currently are.

There is a need to avoid a technical framework that is too narrow, and 
unable to cope with the tremendous variety of material that is out 
there.  The example that you presented from your own academic 
surroundings may work well within a limited topic area from modern 
science, but will quickly be overwhelmed when you try to apply the same 
rules.  The three authors used for your example are only identified by 
their surnames and initials; should an attempt be made to expand those 
initials.  Krajbich is a sufficiently uncommon name for avoiding 
ambiguities, particularly in a joint authorship but the other two would 
quickly become ambiguous when works of sole authorship are considered.  
One cannot assume that there will not be another M. J. Kang working in a 
topic that you know nothing about.

I should also point out that it was quite a common practice for 19th 
century publications not to show the authors.  It was also common 
practice for American publications of the time to usurp entire British 
articles without credit.

Ray