[WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR (contd)

Fri Dec 22 08:26:10 UTC 2006

George Herbert wrote:

>Yes, we all agree, we want good experts to come contribute and make highly
>technical articles better.
>
>No, we don't want to allow anyone including experts to slip unverifyable
>unreferenced stuff in, because we basically don't know for sure what
>anyone's qualifications are.
>
Precisely.  That's why what is said is far more important than who says it.

>It is likely that in many cases, "anyone" isn't going to be qualified to
>understand primary or secondary sources.  That is probably simply cold
>reality; as an example, I don't understand much of the math in the advanced
>physics articles, and less so in the primary sources, despite having had
>many years of advanced university math.
>
>Policies which are good for soft sciences, history, etc, where anyone
>generally can read the source and understand it, are probably not a good
>match for hard ones where even the notations used are domain-specific and
>arbitrary.
>
Yes, if every mathematical step in deriving a theory in physics needs to 
be explained on the spot in great detail the whole article loses its impact.

Ec