[WikiEN-l] So as not to destroy the Wikipedia in order to save it:

[charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com]

"David Gerard" wrote

> On 02/04/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

>  I have something in mind about 'the bottom of the barrel', and trying
> to define sensibly what we want to do about not scraping it straight
> into low-rent articles.

> At this point you lost me in the fogs of metaphor ... er, come again?

We all google, don't we? I'm fairly obstinate: I will hammer on Google using variant searches, to the point where I have refs for an article together. But, there are occasions when Google simply doesn't have enough reputable pages. This for me is 'scraping the bottom of the barrel': other types of database searching, too, give me the feeling that the supporting data for what I hoped to be able to assert is not quite there. 

This is a warning red light on the dashboard: it would be a stretch, don't go there. Now, WP's rep is damaged more than in any other way, I think, by people who write for us, over-riding such signals. We've discussed numbers of such examples on this list. E.g. the reality show contestant with really no checkable background, all sources in effect reproducing stuff from a press pack. Internet memes, things that turn out to be old urban myths. Rumours, blogs.

In short, I'm saying something like 'reliable sources' in some cases shouldn't be butter spread too thin for the size of slice of bread. Damn, metaphor creep once more. But perhaps there's an essay in there. Certainly the sources discussion seems too much to be on 'which single source would you trust', not on evaluating the network.

Charles

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