4 ms·

Given the degree to which established academics disagree with one another, often in a vituperative and acerbic manner in public, I'm not sure having direct cont

Given the degree to which established academics disagree with one another, often in a vituperative and acerbic manner in public, I'm not sure having direct contribution from 'experts' will improve anything. An encyclopedia is a tertiary source and Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. That means Wikipedia is not a repository for primary source material (that would be Wikisource), and nor is it a place to publish secondary source material. As a tertiary source, it is there to report and summarize the state of the debate between published, verifiable secondary sources.

gojomo 17y ago
That's the traditional, official-doctrine view. But you're still citing what is rather than what's best. Maybe the working definition of 'encyclopedia' needs to change. No previous encyclopedia welcomed all editors, or changed second-by-second, or had so many articles, or enjoyed the benefits of mass digital storage and instantaneous global networking. Maybe the next steps in redefining a reference encyclopedia will be just as beneficial as the steps taken so far. Someone needs to try to find out. Nupedia::Wikipedia as Wikipedia::TBD