[WikiEN-l] Re: Jacques Delson and Helga-ism

[Stan Shebs]

Julie Kemp wrote:

>[...] What's in textbooks is not
>always accurate!  I don't know how it's done in France, but I think it's
>similar everywhere in that much is decided by committee.  If you
>subscribe to some of the H-net mailing lists, like I do, or belong to
>the American Historical Association, you know how bad it can be.
>
I think you're touching on the root of frustration here.  Wikipedia
is supposed to be a secondary source, not a primary one, which
means that every factoid in it should be extracted from somewhere
else, preferably from the published work of a recognized authority.
When there are multiple authorities disagreeing with each other,
it's a difficult situation for editors.  For instance, you've alluded
to latest research or latest trends among historians, but is the
latest trend authoritative?  Not really, because maybe it's just a
fad and will be discredited by an article - maybe even one of yours! -
a year from now.  Although we'd always like to pick up the latest
info possible, in some cases I think we have to hold back, just use
what is at the most recent edge of consensus, and note that more
recent claims are not yet settled. (For instance, many of the articles
touching on biological taxonomy are full of caveats because recent
DNA results are casting old groupings into disarray, and nobody
yet knows how it will all shake out.)

Merovingians as not-French is definitely in the radical rethink
category, and it may be a decade, or a generation, or even longer,
before it comes to be generally accepted.  Until then, trying to
edit Wikipedia based on the assumption that the assertion is true
is going to be hard; you're going against an army of editors who
are backed by a horde of published authorities with reputations
much higher than your own.

Stan