Re: a little something for all you wikipedia-lovers

On 28 Jan 2007 10:40:46 -0800, "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:1170009646.840896.286660@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
in sci.lang:

On Jan 28, 1:12 pm, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 28 Jan 2007 08:31:06 -0800, "Peter T. Daniels"
<gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:1170001865.970364.82760@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
in sci.lang:

On Jan 28, 10:28 am, Joachim Pense <s...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:[...]

So is it really acceptable to cite Britannica (rather than a research
paper or monography) in a research article? What would be a reason to
do so?

For some of the history-of-linguistics things I've done, encyclopedia
articles are excellent sources for the "common wisdom" of their age.

This is irrelevant. When you do that, you're not using it
as a general reference, but rather as a primary source, much
as one might use the Paston letters as a primary source for
15th century English social history. Its quality as a
reference work is not at issue in such applications.

Which I trust answers grapheus's question, and which provides a
further differentiation between Britannica and wikipedia,

Well, no. As you've been told many times, each Wikipedia
article has associated with it both a history page, which
contains all prior versions of the article, and a discussion
page, on which those who are interested may discuss possible
changes. This is a rich source of primary evidence of the
range of opinions on various subjects, evidence that could
obviously be appropriately cited in moderately ambitious
undergraduate papers in a number of sociological topics.

and for which reason, totally banning citing EB in college
work is unwise.

So is totally banning the citing of Wikipedia, or even
<shudder> the World Book. It's the lazy way out. The
proper course of action is to (try to) teach students to use
sources appropriately. But if you're going to be that lazy,
it would be far more principled to ban the citing of *all*
general reference encyclopaedias: the differences among them
are precisely the sorts of considerations that you've
already decided your students can't handle.

[...]

Brian
.

Relevant Pages

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