[WikiEN-l] Idealism

[Steve Bennett]

On 8/24/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Ideally, Wikipedia should be developed to the point where
>
>  1) it is the canonical reference resource on the web.
>  2) a) such that articles reference other articles as sources
>       for the current discussion, or
>    b) articles should only reference outside sources and
>       never other articles.

If you're saying "Wikipedia articles should have a reference for every
statement of fact, and none of those references should be Wikipedia",
then yes, that goes without saying.

>
> Accordingly there is some disparity between those who think Wikipedia
>
>  a) should be well cited by its researchers.
>  b) should be well written by its editors.
>  ...where neither is mutually exclusive and neither has "official" status.

What do you mean by a)? Do you mean that people who perform research
using Wikipedia as a base should cite it? For any serious research,
that's not true - we would not want to be cited in an academic
journal. Or do you mean by "well cited" the articles should have lots
of references? I just don't quite get you.

> policy. A canonical example of this was IAR, which was basically a loophole which
> basically claimed itself to be above even NPOV and CIVIL.

My interpretation of IAR is basically a restatement of Be Bold: "Feel
free to perform any good-faith action once, with disregard for all
existing policy and process, if you think it will help Wikipedia
achieve its mission". Anyone who thinks IAR means "you have a license
to do whatever the fuck you want, and anyone who tries to stop you is
a policy nazi" is just dreaming.

Steve