[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's destiny

[David Gerard]

Fred Bauder wrote:

>I think we need to adopt standards of what is an acceptable source
>which is in accord with the nature of the subject. In this case, it
>is not going to be a book published by the Oxford University Press,
>blogs may have to serve, as well as comixs websites. The alternative
>is to drastically trim our popular culture coverage, which is one of
>the bright spots of Wikipedia, if sometimes considered eccentric and
>unscholarly.


Yes. Hard policy for this sort of thing would produce ridiculous
results;  we can't formulate more than guidelines, to be applied
according to editorial judgement. If an editor has that judgement,
they can reasonably judge if a given source is rubbish or not; if they
don't, no amount of guidelines can give it to them. You can't
Taylorise clue.

Are John Lee's featured articles on Beatles songs entirely written
using peer-reviewed academic journals as sources? Of course not.

(And in my experience as what sociologists use as a primary source
[music journalism], peer-reviewed academia on pop music is an
incredibly low-quality source of information or indeed clue.)


- d.