On Sep 17, 2006, at 9:51 AM, charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
I see I'm on #499 of my technical articles on mathematics. A high proportion of those were actually written straight out of my head, as I saw the need. I do have books to hand, Google at need, and so on. Of course it all used to be more free-wheeling.
And, let's note, it used to be better. Jimbo has previously noted that the things we've done to open Wikipedia more (Semi-protection) have worked better than the things we've done to close it off (Prohibiting anonymous page creation). Our source fixation has served to close us off substantially, and it hasn't worked.
People should not be made afraid to add information because they remember being told it in class last semester, or because they know it's somewhere in that book, but they don't really want to find the page number, or because they read it in Rolling Stone a few months ago. Our attitude should be "add information first, and if the information looks dodgy we'll challenge it."
Which is surprisingly consonant with [[WP:BOLD]]. Remember that policy? Those were the days...
-Phil