Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
Jeff Raymond wrote:
Not to mention a good academic paper has less stringent "reliable" standards than a Wikipedia entry.
No, I don't think it does - or if it does it's not relevant. We will allow sources of varying degrees of reliability as long as overall there are one or two really solid sources for the core premise of the article (because, unlike academic papers, we don't allow original research). But as long as the subject itself is fundamentally supported by good, credible sources, it's not necessary to cite Britannica for every trivial fact.
Where I have difficulty is in finding that this view still rests on a number of highly subjective notions: "reliability", "really solid", "good, credible", "trivial". ven leaving aside "original research" and how we view that there is still a wide gap in how we understand these subjective terms. If I use the academic paper as a reference point it's considerably more than what we might find in popular publications, and noticeably less than what is wanted by those who view each article as an isolated whole that strives for independence from the rest of the encyclopedia.
Ec