At 11:22 PM 2008-10-15, Steven C. Barr wrote:
--Thus, it seems, Wikipedia doesn't want anything which can be
demonstrably
PROVEN to be accurate...which might explain its less-than-impressive
repuation for truth and accuracy...?!
Steven,
Did you study the link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research
???
There you will find what I wrote about in a previous post. They are
TRYING to set rules for good reasons. Whether it always works or not
is the discussion, but the basis of using only secondary sources that
have already been vetted as a way to keep un-vetted original thinking
out of their general reference work.
If nothing else, I'm finding Wikipedia a good place to find better
sources--especially as more and more articles grow footnote references
as the founders hoped.
Their approach is increasing the likelihood that the references used
to craft articles have been peer reviewed. Their point is similar to
Tom's about triangulation, just quoting original data without
interpretation can get really confusing and can lead to misleading
conclusions. Their assumption is if the secondary source makes the
interpretation and it has been published then it is likely to be
somewhat mainstream.
Cheers,
Richard
Richard L. Hess email: richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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