On Mon, 12 Jul 2004 14:11:29 -0700, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote: In a way it is Wikipedia's strength that we don't *depend* on scholars and experts. Everything is open to review including something that is added by an "expert". Articles written by experts only are more susceptible to lack of neutrality. Ofcourse we need expertise but we also need ordinary people who make articles written by experts still better. This is the only place where you can clean up an article written by an expert (assuming you are bettering it in ever so tiny a way). Hemanshu

It depends. In my opinion, Wikipedia compares well with traditional encyclopedias for several reasons: it is far more up-to-date than encyclopedias on CD-ROM for example CD-ROMs would still show that Ronald Reagan was alive; many of the articles are edited extensively and the reasons for inclusion of material is available on discussion pages - it is probable that articles are reviewed by several people with expertise in an area not just one; there are topics covered extensively in WIkipedia ie computer science in far more depth than traditional encyclopedias; we are far quicker to add encyclopedic topics as even the gentleman from the Encyclopedia Britannica acknowledged - I have a a 1970 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica that doesn't even contain an article on the Beatles - in contrast, we have extensive articles on most aspects of popular culture; and as an Australian, Wikipedia has a far more extensive coverage of Australian topics than other encyclopedias - for example, I looked up retiring Australian Environment Minister Dr David Kemp and cricketer Shane Warne who tied the world record for number of test wickets taken and both had good articles while other encyclopedias lack coverage. If I was a high-school student, I wouldn't use the Wikipedia as the sole source of material for an assignment but I wouldn't use the Encyclopedia Britannica or Encarta as the sole source of material for an assignment either. Students should learn to use a wide variety of sources for assignments and, in general, I feel confident that they would find useful material in the Wikipedia for school projects or assignments. Also, a person in the public seeking useful reference material can generally find it in the Wikipedia although the same proviso about using a variety of sources should apply. This isn't to say there aren't areas in the Wikipedia that need more comprehensive coverage or articles on Wikipedia that don't need a lot of care and attention. However, every day the Wikipedia is being improved both in quantity and quality of articles. For a project that is three and a half years old, it has come a long way Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote: Hemanshu Desai wrote I think, in the longer term, the dependence will be seen to be greater. An interesting comparison is Murray's New English Dictionary, for which the basic material seems mostly to have come in over the first five years, submitted by many readers. Then bringing the entries to a polished state took much longer. That is, we do see a great enthusiasm for getting material onto WP. Charles _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l --------------------------------- Find local movie times and trailers on Yahoo! Movies.