[WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted!

Wed Nov 29 17:20:03 UTC 2006

--- Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> There are some subjects that an encyclopedia can not and should not
> touch because there is simply no real research on the subjects yet.

It may be a definitions thing, but I think an encyclopedia can contain original
research and/or rely on non-"reliable" sources and still be an encyclopedia.
Wikipedia is not such an encyclopedia, and for good reason, but it's not a
totally invalid thing to want to do in general.

I support its deletion, but it's true that [[GNAA]] was useful to people even
though it wasn't verifiable, and even though they could get the same info from
other places on the Web. A lot of people find Wikipedia articles useful even
when they're not supported by sources. "Encyclopedic" style -- you know,
concise, formal tone, lack of opinionated waffling etc -- is an efficient way
of getting across the raw facts, and we're usually fairly accurate and neutral
(at least when measured against the wider Web).

Should Wikipedia accept original research or use less-than-ideal sources in
cases where there is little or no existing literature? Nope: the reader would
have no way to establish whether they could trust an article's contents. It
might work if you had those articles controlled by verifiable experts, but
again, Wikipedia's not that encyclopedia.

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

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