[WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 41, Issue 153

[Sarah]

On 12/19/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Sarah wrote
>
> > The problem is that material we use as sources must be available to
> > the general public, and it's not clear that we can expect the public
> > to have access to a legal database.
>
> This is rather objectionable, as a type of argument. 'Available' to the 'general public' contains two very negotiable ideas. Few academic sources (in proportion to the total) are easily available to many (in proportion to the 6 billion total) of the world's inhabitants. Making a fuss about this is a sure route to a worse encyclopedia.

Any public library can order material that's in a regular academic
library. Similarly, they can order any material that's in a legal
database. But they can't "order" the database itself, and it's the
database as a whole that Zero wanted to call his "source," or rather
his own interpretation of its contents. That's not reasonably
checkable by Wikipedia readers, which is why we don't allow OR.

Sarah