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

[Ray Saintonge]

I've crossposted my response to the Foundation and Wikisource lists 
since it could interest people there.

Delirium wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>  
>
>>geni wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>On 9/20/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>>>      
>>>
>>>>I guess as a reader I don't see the benefit in *not* covering
>>>>everything.  I agree there is a slant towards more coverage of recent
>>>>news events, but that's simply because they're easier to cover.  The
>>>>solution, IMO, is not to cover recent events less, but to cover older
>>>>events more.  I want to know the equivalent of this stuff for other time
>>>>periods!  Were there short-lived but at the time massively-covered
>>>>events in the 1890s, equivalent to today's frenzies over child
>>>>kidnappings?  What about the thousands of political scandals, major and
>>>>minor, that have at various times shortened governments' tenures, forced
>>>>cabinet reshuffles, etc., etc.?  It's all good info we're missing!
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>Problem is that a lot of the data that would be useful in answering
>>>your question is stored on microfilm and there isn't really a quick
>>>way to scan that.
>>>      
>>>
>>This is a Wikisource function, but that dosn't make it easier.  I have 
>>most of the first 20 years of McClure's Magazine.  It was a monthly that 
>>became famous for muckraking journalism, and exposing the behaviour of 
>>big companies and government administration in the pre WWI era.  1,200 
>>pages per year for 20 years gives 24,000 pages, and is a daunting task.  
>>Weeklies and dailies don't make things any easier.  
>>    
>>
>While it would certainly be nice to have it all scanned, I don't think 
>it's necessary.  We already cite lots of sources that aren't available 
>on the internet---recently published books, journal articles, etc.---so 
>I don't see why it would be a bigger problem that old news articles are 
>only available in archives, on microfilm, or via digital subscription.  
>Ain't nothin' wrong with citing sources that require a visit to a 
>library to access.
>
This is certainly a fair comment.  Of course the recent publications 
have copyright constraints that are a block to any kind of scanning.  
Certainly, for the sake of discussion I am limiting my comments to 
material where the public domain status is unquestioned.  That's enough 
material to keep us busy.

Some of my old bound volumes of "McClure's", "Scientific American", 
"Popular Science", and other odd volumes have library markings and 
indications that they were discarded by some public or college library.  
I have no objection to people visiting libraries, but there's no 
guarantee that a nearby library will have the material sought.  Project 
Gutenberg already includes 6 issues of "McClure's, a far but complete 
but substantial number of "Scientific American" when it was a weekly, 
and no "Popular Science".  ("Popular Science" in the 19th century had 
far more in-depth articles than its present incarnation.)  In general, I 
don't think we should be duplicating the efforts of PG; there's more 
than enough work for everybody to do.

Other important magazines like [[The Smart Set]], where H. L. Mencken 
wrote, are much more difficult to find.  We do need to stay within the 
realm of the possible.  Making information freely available is not a 
simple task; it will likely take the co-operation and co-ordination of 
many players who will each establish where they can work best.  I would 
love to be able to create direct links from a WMF project to a specific 
spot in a book that has been digitized by another player without having 
to contend with a lot of proprietary restrictions being applied to 
public domain books.

The task is enormous.

Ec