phoebe ayers wrote: > Maybe we need to put more emphasis on "encyclopedia as a tertiary > source" -- let other people do the summarizing and the vetting and > sorting out of what ideas are going to stick around for the long-term, > and focus away from citing original research directly, which helps > side-step the danger of representing obscure or untested theory as > canonical truth. This might be particularly be true for new scientific > discoveries or new ideas in the humanities. (Different perhaps for > events in the news, articles about pop culture, etc). >
That's generally what I try to do, at least in cases where high-quality summary sources are already available. IMO, if there are well-regarded survey articles, specialist encyclopedias, etc., on a subject, then it's verging on original research to directly cite even secondary sources (e.g. journal articles with original research) to develop a new summary view. I only really resort to citing secondary sources directly on a pragmatic basis if: 1) no good tertiary sources already exist; and 2) the material is either not likely to be controversial, or I've checked that it's corroborated by multiple independent sources. -Mark _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
