[WikiEN-l] Citation obsession

[Stephen Bain]

On 4/29/07, John Lee <johnleemk at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> <CtrlAltDestroy> Here is my impression of Wikipedia.
> <CtrlAltDestroy> "There are five fingers on the human hand [citation
> needed]"

As anyone who's written an essay should be able to tell you, one
doesn't need to cite general knowledge (defined as anything that a lay
person would be able to find in a general reference work on the
subject, without any extra information).

The response to which in the Wikipedia context is "OMG, but we *are* a
general reference work, what do we do?" And the response to that is,
link to the article on "hand" (or maybe "finger") through the magic of
hypertext, and there the person can find all the details they want.

-- 
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com