Re: Sort it

On 10/27/12 2:28 AM, George Herbert wrote:
> Our standard is not to try and attain a perfect level of only totally
> truthful information.  Nobody could realistically do that.  Our
> standard is to aim for and have quality controls to not be worse than
> the world at large in a given field.  I.e., we accept on first
> assertion that external fields' internal peer review is "good enough",
> though we will usually at least listen to counterarguments that some
> sources may in fact be better or worse than that.
>

The way I usually think of it is that Wikipedia's end result, if it were 
successful, would be an accurate summary of the current consensus in all 
fields of human knowledge. Our physics articles would reflect the 
current state of physics research; our history articles the current 
historical consensus on each era (with discussion of significant 
dissenting views and uncertainties); and so on. Now whether any of those 
are *right*, that's a whole other problem. It's hard to enough to 
produce a complete summary of the current state of physics and 
historical research without also attempting to *fix* anything that might 
be wrong with the current state of physics, and *revise* historical 
understanding of various subjects. That's just not in our scope.

Beyond practicality, I think that's actually a useful result. When I 
read Wikipedia on 14th-century France, I want a capsule overview of what 
historians currently think about 14th-century France, not a revisionist 
take that  a group of Wikipedia editors thinks is more truthful. As a 
tertiary source, an accurate summary of the current state of the 
literature is what I want and expect to read.

-Mark