The key part of his article is a little more than halfway down: "I also realized that my well-sourced biography can be attributed, in part, to the fact that eve

The key part of his article is a little more than halfway down: "I also realized that my well-sourced biography can be attributed, in part, to the fact that every word I’ve published is available online, and thus easily cited as a reference. In the eyes of Wikipedia editors, my being a digital native appears to be a distinct advantage: it’s much easier to link to existing online sources than to visit libraries and dig through decades-old physical media, such as books and newspapers." I am a Wikipedian. He has that right. Wikipedia has a HUGE bias toward online sources, as a practical matter, rather than toward print sources. That's not official policy on Wikipedia. Wikipedia policy makes clear that it is perfectly okay to cite a book that is a reliable source on other grounds, even if the book is very hard for any other Wikipedian to find in a library or as a used book. But the practical thing that happens on Wikipedia is that most articles are based on sources that Google can find, and many articles that are otherwise well sourced will be doubted if editors can't find any confirmation of their content on Google. Basically Google's ability to serve up what humankind has put onto the public-visible World Web Wide limits the development of Wikipedia. I learned to do research the old-fashioned way, at a university with a huge library, and began using online databases there as a student job back in the 1970s. Today I can look things up with practiced facility online, but I still find that looking around in a library full of dead-tree books can turn up all kinds of information that has never been online. It takes both kinds of research to build a good encyclopedia. Just for fun, take a look at how Wikipedia describes what Wikipedians should be here to do as encyclopedia editors, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Here_to_build_an_encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Here_to_build_an_enc... as well as its description of what Wikipedia is not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_no...