[WikiEN-l] A much neglected aspect of quality - Bibliographies

[Mak]

I see Wikipedia cited more and more as a possible first step for serious
research. I have seen more and more people suggest that Wikipedia should
encompass all or most of the articles included in specialist encyclopedias,
such as the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (my personal
favorite). I have also seen many more calls for working on quality of
articles, rather than quantity. I see a major lack in terms of using WP for
deeper research, rather than quick information gathering, when comparing
Wikipedia to these specialist encyclopedias. This lack is in well developed
and defined bibliographies.

I am not talking about people citing their sources and sticking them in
reference sections, which I also think is important. I'm talking about a
limited review of the literature, mentioning which works are considered
seminal, which are standard, which give the best overview for the
uninitiated, basically a good bibliography which is not too bloated and
which is not too biased.

We frequently talk about how students should not use Wikipedia as a sole
source, but as a starting point. I see the best way for Wikipedia to be a
starting point is to give the basic information, and then point people to
the very best information. The best books or journal articles will not
necessarily be the ones which were to hand when a person was first writing
the article, or when someone was getting rid of {{fact}} templates. In the
best of all possible worlds they were, but it's more likely they were the
most easily accessible, and may have been online resources which were not as
good as what would be available in your local library or with a subscription
to JSTOR or similar.

I would like to encourage everyone to think about how to create great
bibliographies, especially for subjects where you could easily be snowed
under with relevant works, or where the best literature is not necessarily
obvious.

And some questions about Bibliographies - should we create them in separate
pages or namespaces so they can be better controlled and saved from
spammers? Is ISBN really the best way to identify and find books? Should we
think about a partnership with OCLC/WorlCat or some other database so that
people can easily find the books mentioned locally? Can we simplify our
templates for citing books, or should we make them even more complex so they
fit with the MARC standards <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARC_standards> ?

Sorry for the long rant, but this is something which has been bothering me
about Wikipedia for the last year and a half, and where I don't feel like
much progress has been made in terms of quality.
Makemi