[WikiEN-l] Idealism

[Steve Bennett]

On 8/24/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> "Yes"?? Thats citenazism! Its usefulness is dubious outside of scratching libel
> out of biographies. When did this happen? How would using this policy have affected
> Wikipedia's growth from its humble beginnings when Nupedia sucked down a quarter mil?
> How are "good writers" supposed to rephrase in an explanatory way what technocrats
> plop down as fact?

Can I remind you the thread topic is "idealism"? :) Put it this way:
if there was an article where every statement of fact *was* cited,
would that be a good thing or a bad thing? A good thing, right? That
doesn't mean that every other article is a failure - we haven't
discussed minimum standards yet.

> No. I meant simply that people follow different modes of editing, one of which
> can be generally called "research."

Ok, this is a new way of thinking to me - you're distinguishing
between those who do the research and add it, and the wordsmithers who
just shuffle around material that's already there?

> > we would not want to be cited in an academic journal.
>
> We dont?

We don't have any original ideas, and we don't claim that anything is
truer than the citation linked to it. Why would you cite us?

Steve