[WikiEN-l] Project proposal

[Cormac Lawler]

On 3/31/06, flogan1 at swarthmore.edu <flogan1 at swarthmore.edu> wrote:
>
> Hello list! I'm new to the list, so perhaps a short intro is in order. My
> name is Finlay and I am known to WP as Cantara. I've been a Wikipedian since
> sometime in 2004, but have only become really active in the last few months.
> I joined the list at the suggestion of CComMack, who thought that an idea I
> had (see below) might want input from people knowledgeably about policy and
> so forth.
>
> My idea is this. We all know that Wikipedia is great and all, repository of
> the world's information, &c. However, there are people who disagree, who
> think that Wikipedia is inaccurate because it is written by people who are
> not experts and because it lacks oversight (or whatever it is they're saying
> now). When considering these two things together, I realized that there is a
> kind of information that Wikipedia seriously lacks, and that is
> bibliographies. If you've written a research paper lately (I'm writing two at
> the moment, myself) you know that the list of books that the author has read
> is just as valuable as whatever the book itself is about. However,
> Wikipedians don't really make an effort to include "further reading" as part
> of the entry, beyond what they list as citations.
>
> I wanted to start a project to focus on getting that store of information
> into Wikipedia, and once I get around to it I'll list it on Proposed
> Projects. However, as mentioned about, a fellow editor suggested that a
> project like this might have repurcussions in other areas (and I hope he
> responds to explain what they were - something about the manual of style?).
>
> Discuss, then, and if you'd like to help, I'll have information up somewhere
> on my userpage fairly soon.
>
> Yours,
> Cantara


Hi Finlay,

I think there's real merit to this idea, and, though I understand the
previously mentioned problems of blindly adding books for the sake of
it or adding books for commercial interest, this needn't deter people
from building (and then accessing) a comprehensive bibliography on a
given subject.

I agree this could be done better in Wikipedia in general (though
there are obvious good examples where this *is* done well). But I'm
thinking this could fit quite well with Wikiversity (another proposed
project), which will (amongst other things) assemble a network of
references for further reading on a topic. You can see details for
this project at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity/Modified_project_proposal -
though there is much more information on this (something I'm working
on at the moment).

What do you think?

Cormac

> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>