[Foundation-l] Re: Sources and sourceability

Sun Dec 4 00:05:10 UTC 2005

Brian wrote:

> Lars Aronsson wrote:
>
>> Brian wrote:
>>
>>> On the contrary, any published books, such as.... Encyclopaedia 
>>> Britannica, has every single one of the its facts checked against 
>>> each individual source. This is a requirement of the publisher, and 
>>> of the company.
>>
>> This is an interesting statement.  What sources do you have for your 
>> description of how the editors of EB work?  Has this been documented 
>> in public?
>
> Danny originally brought this fact up because he is writing a 
> reference book as part of a series of books to be published. Every 
> single one of the statements he made in the book had to have a source. 
> He said it took several months for every one of his facts to be 
> checked against every single source. This is how it works in the world 
> of publishing. We have simply side-stepped this out of laziness, in my 
> opinion.

It's great that you trust Danny, but some would think that using another 
Wikipedian as a reference source is not a good idea.  Now we just need 
to bug Danny about his source for the specific question that was asked.  
Good references need to be traceable.

Ec