[WikiEN-l] Is Wikipedia a News Portal (among other things)?

[charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com]

"Andrew Lih" wrote

> I'm curious if there is a reasonable reason against Wikipedia serving
> this function, other than "encyclopedias are not news", which I would
> argue is old-style thinking (and something I've heard from more than
> one so-called "academic" committee.)

It's a reasonable argument, re current affairs and 'first draft of history', that two-steps-forward-and-one-step-back is less convincing. It is not one I support - I'm with Andrew on this. After all, in science, this is the norm, and we have no problem with saying that when the science changes, we change the articles. 

The second-order point on that is, well, WP shouldn't _anticipate_ the scientific revision, so the same should apply to history. But I think the policy on original research then enters: it can correctly be said of WP that its current affairs coverage should _not_ be doing the job of historical synthesis, ahead of the historians.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software 
Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information