2008/12/23 Wilhelm Schnotz <wilhelm(a)nixeagle.org>rg>:
I hate to pop into this, but have we thought about the
question of
reader access. By this I mean as it currently is with most of our
sources, our readers are able to verify the articles themselves if
they wish to. If we start to use sources that only certain people can
access, that closes off the ability of the average reader to verify
what we write.
We've discussed this before, in a general case, and pretty much dismissed it.
Limiting ourselves to easily-accessible sources sounds good in
practice, but immediately runs into trouble. We simply can't write
articles on most of our subjects to a good and reliable standard
without relying heavily on access to print books (which people object
to because they're offline) or subscription databases (which people
object to because they're not accessible to casual users).
(This should be distinguished from, eg, people sourcing things to
private archives; in the former case they're accessible by anyone who
goes through the right channels, but in the latter they may be
literally inaccessible to anyone else...)
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk