[Foundation-l] Has Wikipedia changed since 2005?

[geni]

On 3 October 2010 13:43, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> So 30 seconds British library catalog search then forget
>> about it.
>>
>> Which means that unless you happen to live with a library
>> that
>> includes a bunch of naval history or are prepared to spend
>> a non
>> trivial amount of money you can't edit say [[HMS Argus
>> (I49)]] (which
>> cites Warship 1994). You appear to be missing the point
>> that wikipedia
>> is a collaboration.
>
>
>
> Well, it should be *informed* collaboration.
>
> Of course I am not saying that you are not allowed to edit [[HMS Argus (I49)]] unless you have read "Warship 1994". If that book is >not available to you, but you have a different source, then naturally it's absolutely fine for you to jump in and add content based on >that source.
>
> The point I am making is that you should *look* for scholarly sources, because they are likely to be the most valuable.

So I can run a 30 second search on the british library catalogue than
go back to doing what I was going to do all along. Great use of my
time.


> I don't use a library either. But I regularly use google books, which has previews of millions of books.
>
> For example, you can look for university press books that have "canal(s)" in the title like so:
>
> http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&tbs=bks:1&q=canal+intitle:canal+OR+intitle:canals+inpublisher:university&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=
>
> Then click on a book and read it online.

Great except it all the results only cover a single nation's canals
and building up a knowledge base like that simply isn't viable
timewise. Have you any idea how long it would take to read 47K books?
Strangely none of which are the book most cited in the current
article.

> There is a utility that converts google books URLs into a readily formatted Wikipedia reference:
>
> http://reftag.appspot.com/?book_url=&dateformat=dmy
>
> When a page is missing in the google preview, you can sometimes find it in the amazon preview. And you can use google scholar to see whether a book is well cited.
>
> I have a subscription to Questia ($50 a year), which has lots of humanities stuff -- books, journals, some press. You can read the complete books online. And sometimes, of course, I end up buying books.
>
> Your Warship book has snippet view in google books:
>
> http://books.google.com/books?cd=1&id=z2AqAQAAIAAJ&dq=isbn:0851776302&q=Argus#search_anchor
>
> This means that even though you can't see complete pages, google has the complete content stored, and with a little trickery you can get to text beyond the snippets:
>
> http://www.google.com/search?tbs=bks:1&tbo=1&q=%22did,+might+well+have+become+a+very+famous+ship%22&btnG=Search+Books
>
> The minimum requirement for content contributions in Wikipedia is, and always has been, that you should have read a reliable source.
>

Which has nothing to do with your original position. Remember you
wanted people to review the literature.

-- 
geni