[WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 41, Issue 153

Fri Dec 22 20:31:18 UTC 2006

Sarah wrote:

><charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>Sarah wrote
>>    
>>
>>>The problem is that material we use as sources must be available to
>>>the general public, and it's not clear that we can expect the public
>>>to have access to a legal database.
>>>      
>>>
>>This is rather objectionable, as a type of argument. 'Available' to the 'general public' contains two very negotiable ideas. Few academic sources (in proportion to the total) are easily available to many (in proportion to the 6 billion total) of the world's inhabitants. Making a fuss about this is a sure route to a worse encyclopedia.
>>    
>>
>Any public library can order material that's in a regular academic
>library. Similarly, they can order any material that's in a legal
>database. But they can't "order" the database itself, and it's the
>database as a whole that Zero wanted to call his "source," or rather
>his own interpretation of its contents. That's not reasonably
>checkable by Wikipedia readers, which is why we don't allow OR.
>
The database or library is an intermediate to the sources.  If 20 items 
in the database are said to support a point it is still the 20 items 
that provide the verification, and not the database itself.

Ec