[WikiEN-l] The vexed issue of sources
Daniel P. B. Smith
wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com
Tue Dec 12 10:56:57 UTC 2006
> Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2006 22:06:50 -0800
>
> Libraries are wonderful things, but a scholar who believes that
> "the sum
> of all human knowledge" is to be found in the library alone is like a
> medieval monk who believes that the same is to be found only in the
> monastery.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and an encyclopedia _is_ a distillation
of things to be found in libraries.
Things that are _not_ to be found in libraries are published in peer-
reviewed journals, not encyclopedias. Wikipedia is not a peer-
reviewed journal. And journals have their own requirements, which in
fact are more stringent than those for an encyclopedia, one being
reproducibility of results. That's the "new-knowledge" equivalent of
what we call "verifiability" and it is _much_ harder to do.
Which is why writing an encyclopedia article takes on the order of
weeks while writing a research paper takes on the order of years.
Things that are _not_ to be found in libraries are also published in
popular magazines, books by any publisher that thinks they can make
money by selling them, self-published, published on the web, etc.
Whether these are to be called "knowledge" depends on which
definition of "knowledge" you use. In the Britannica's slogan, "The
sum of human knowledge," they likely meant AHD4's meaning number 4,
"4. Learning; erudition: teachers of great knowledge." It is, after
all, an encyclo-PAEDIA.
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