[WikiEN-l] Idealism

Thu Aug 24 21:26:42 UTC 2006

On 8/24/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I think you're misinterpreting that.
> > It would be good if every fact in WP was referenced.
>
> But are all references the same? How do we distinguish between references?
>
> "References" seems to include to other web pages which people can quickly
> verify
> but may not be quite authoritative. Voluminous books which may be
> considered
> authoritative but might only found in the dusty libraries of elite
> collections.

References clearly aren't all the same.  And won't in a real world all
agree.

We already deal with this in presenting multiple points of view including
significant minority opinions.  Well referenced academic works routinely
cite multiple sources, including leading opposing opinions.

I'd like to see both easily followable web links *and* paper-library
references for stuff.  Web links, so that people can follow the chain and
see another online source, and paper-library references because a lot of
classical knowledge still isn't online properly.  Over time, maybe with
book-scanning projects etc, that will change.

Face it: even where a source is extremely old, and therefore considered
> "canonical"
> such often show the limitations and biases of the time and culture wherin
> they
> were written. Note the difference between a reference and a quotation,
> either by a
> respected philosopher whose codification has come to be a canonical one,
> or by
> a claimed authority on the subject. There is a huge subjective variance
> here.

Absolutely.  Some of this eventually regresses into determining what our
definition of knowledge is... which ceases to be information science and
moves into philosophy.

Well written WP reference articles will be able to put topics and references
into the subjective context, as well as a notional commonly agreed upon
objective framework.

-- 
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com