[WikiEN-l] I believe I called this some time ago...

[joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu]

Quoting Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net>:

> On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 20:02:59 +0000, "David Gerard"
> <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I'd disagree, actually. Having this stuff documented is *gold* to the
>> researcher. It would go in a specialist encyclopedia of the subject,
>> it should go in Wikipedia.
>
> I have just been reading an academic work on musicology that says
> anything past about 1900 becomes a nightmare for the musicologist
> because, outside of the masters, the volume of documentation is
> simply too big to allow any meaningful process of critical
> categorisation.
>
> I think the view on the thousands of sold-a-dozen CDs will be the
> same: of no practical use or interest, does not make the cut in any
> rational analysis of the subject.

If Wikipedia is doing its job they should have an immediate ability to focus
based on a) popularity (number sold) or b) a more indirect measure of
popularity (such as number of Wikipedia articles which link to the subject).
I'd suspect(speculating here) that part of the problem for the 
musicologists is
that no extensive organization of the pre-1900 documentation occurred when
people were still around who knew about the material.