Re: a little something for all you wikipedia-lovers



On Jan 28, 2:04 pm, Trond Engen <trond...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Peter T. Daniels skreiv:





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:

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


So you -- of all -- outrule Wikipedia as a source for the common wisdom
of our days? Or as a source for research on the validity of Wikipedia
itself?

I'm not sure what your "of all" means, but yes, for common wisdom it's
useless because it can change from minute to minute to reflect any
individual's opinion or prejudice or misinformation of the moment.

Research on its validity, if that were the topic of a college essay or
term paper, would have to be conducted with reference to it, of course.

.

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