[Foundation-l] Is random article truly random

[Andreas K.]

On Thu, Oct 20, 2011 at 5:35 PM, Theo10011 <de10011 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I find something very odd in that statement. But first, What professional
> standards? I always assumed, Wikipedia was the amateur alternative to the
> professionals, the same white, grey, male academicians that skew the
> professional standards.




I never assumed that, and it is not consistent with basic Wikipedia policies
that have existed for almost as long as Wikipedia has existed. Wikipedia is
based on professionally published sources. They are privileged as the most
(or for practical purposes almost only) reliable sources on which to base
Wikipedia content.

Wikipedia is set up to reflect and summarise these sources, not to provide
an alternative worldview. We do not allow unsourced statements, or
self-published sources (except in well-circumscribed exceptional cases).




> The professional group might be more homogeneous
> than anything else, the only thing that differs is that there no barrier of
> entry for Wikipedia.
>
> Wikipedia was made and is constantly maintained by "male teenage/early
> twenties age group" you can not reconstitute an entire demographic of a
> community to satisfy some politically-correct notions of inclusiveness.
>



Wikipedians of any age group subscribe to the principle of reliable
sourcing. And reliable sources can be written and published by (almost) any
age group.

Andreas