[WikiEN-l] Rating the English wikipedia

[Andrew Gray]

On 15 February 2011 20:18, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> Arguably the answer is "yes", back to the 16th century at least. There
> has actually been quite a lot of havoc onsite over stub MP biographies
> during the past year, but it transpires that there are pretty good
> sources back to 1660, and usually adequate sources in the century
> leading up to that (if you work at it). The ODNB took a decision not to
> include all MPs (it says somewhere, in terms that suggest that it was a
> decision that did at least require a moment's thought).

There is a project (even longer-running and slower-burning than the
ODNB) to construct a reference work covering all MPs, at least as much
as they're known, along with various other bits and pieces:

http://www.histparl.ac.uk/about.html

In the past sixty years, they've managed to cover a little over half
the timeframe in twenty-eight (!) volumes. I have never seen their
work, I admit, but I'd be intrigued to...

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk