----- Original Message ----- From: "David Goodman" <dgoodma...@gmail.com> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org> Sent: Sunday, October 17, 2010 5:11 AM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Expertise and Wikipedia redux
> (I leave aside the question of whether the synthesis or even the basic > information can actually be relied on--I know of no branch of > humanities or social science that has remained static over the past > century. ) Thank you for addressing my main point, if only briefly. I don't have a difficulty with wholesale copying in itself. It is the *indiscriminate* wholesale copying without 1. elementary fact-checking 2. checking for agreement with more recent scholarship 3. checking for style. Many of the older sources are written in an outdated style that is not suited to a modern mass-market encyclopedia. I haven't checked the related article on William Smith http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Smith_(lexicographer) (he was the editor of Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology) but I bet the sentence "In 1867, he became editor of the Quarterly Review, which he directed with marked success until his death; his remarkable memory and accuracy, as well as his tact and courtesy, specially fitting him for such a post." was lifted directly without any attempt at integration with the project. And my point remains about Wikipedia in 100 years time. If Wikipedia relies on 100-year old sources, in 100 years time it will rely on sources produced today. But today we only have Wikipedia. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
