David Goodman wrote:
We can expect our editors to use libraries. (And if
you
can't or don't want to work that way, there's an immense amount to write on
WP. There's
a great many topics--academic topics even--that can best be written with
available Internet sources. )
Really? If I have in my personal library, a book that is not the most
recent edition, I am _not_ going to go to the library everytime just to
check if they have a more recent edition., and it would be thoroughly
unreasonable to expect me to do that. Obsolescence in a topic or a
textbook is not going to develop on any kind of uniform basis, nor will
the texts of different publishers develop these ideas at the same rate.
Your expectation of editors is unrealistic and demeaning.
Is your goal to produce a WP useful for 2006, or 1996?
It would be very
interesting to
deliberately invent an encyclopedia appropriate for some specific earlier
historical period,
but many of the users may be more interested in the present.
Without the past there would be no present, and even less an
understanding of the present.. The encyclopedia is not just a snapshot
of 2006, but of everything that led to that moment. Your suggestion of
a separate encyclopedia for some earlier time makes no sense.
Ec
On 10/25/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net>
wrote:
>David Goodman wrote:
>
>
>
>>and textbooks are not reference material. Most libraries discard them
>>when the next edition comes out (or keep one edition back). Libraries with
>>
>>
>>immense amounts of storage space put one copy in
>>storage & throw out the others.
>>
>>(Nor should old textbooks be cited on WP except for historical interest).
>>"In the 80s, this book was universally used & is therefore of
significance
>>
>>
>>in the development of ..."
>>
>>
>This last bit is not realistic. While it is still preferable to cite
>the most recent edition, the fact is that people cite the edition that
>is available to them. We cannot require people to go out and buy the
>most recent edition before contributing. It's up to subsequent editors
>to update the information if they have something more recent.
>