On 20/01/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
It is far easier to source a text than to gather sources and write a new article from scratch. Sourcing is grunt work where writing a new article requires creativity and whatnot.
That kind of thinking is one of the biggest problem with Wikipedia at the moment. Sourcing should always come *before* writing. The source is where the information came from, that's what "source" means, so you have to have the source before you can write the article. Adding sources afterwards is a way of fixing a problem - unsourced articles - it should not be a part of the standard process of writing articles. The problem should never be created in the first place.
We want the same end: good, readable, sourced mathematical articles. I'm suggesting that sourcing these notes would be the quickest way to achieve this. I agree that sourcing written texts is not the preferable way to achieve our end, but I don't think the end-article is worse than an alternative article written from sources first.