[WikiEN-l] Larry's text is being (unfairly?) criticised

[K Forstner]

Rotem wrote:

> [...] Nevertheless, the discussion has diverged to other
> topics not necessarily related to Larry or his
> writing. For example, I have recently added a new
> addition to the "What Wikipedia is Not" article, from
> what was criticism of the very suitability of these
> types of texts to wikipedia, the guideline/rule in its
> current form goes like this:
>
> What Wikipedia is not
>
> 19.  An educational textbook. Though Wikipedia
> attempts to explain many non-trivial scientific and
> philosophical topics, articles should not be written
> merely with the intention of teaching the subject,
> this is what book references are for.
>
> I plan to add more refinements to the policies and
> rules in the next weeks.
>
> -- Rotem
>
Why should articles not be written "merely with the intention of teaching
the subject"? If we really wanted to embark on a discussion of whether
Wikipedia should, at least in part, be able to replace coursebooks, we would
have to come up with a very good and unambiguous definition of "teaching" --
and "learning", for that matter -- first.

Printed encyclopaedias do have different types of articles these days. They
include the short, basic information type as well as essay type entries. So
what's the problem?

I'd agree, however, that it does not look good if in a Wikipedia article you
get too many empty phrases such as "As we have seen in the previous chapter
...".

Anyway: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki_is_not_paper.

Kurt Forstner aka KF