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

[Keith Old]

On 9/21/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:
>
> "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
>
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G'day folks,

It seems to me that we have a valuable function in giving the news a context
such as who public figures are and the importance of public events. As long
as our articles are based on reliable sources rather than unorthodox
versions of events such as Queen Elizabeth II is a drugs smuggler.

We first came to widespread public awareness as a result of the work on the
2004 tsunami. It is one of our strengths and our coverage of contemporary
events cannot be matched by our rivals.

We cannot afford to wait for the historians to eventually write articles
before we cover publid figures and events. We should do it right but we
should do it.

Regards