On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 4:35 AM, <wjhon...@aol.com> wrote: > <<In a message dated 1/6/2009 7:26:34 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, > cbeckh...@fastmail.fm writes: > > That's exactly my point. There is no lack of academic analysis of > politicians, of artists, etc. But we do not seem to use any of it. > > For example, I can find numerous articles on George W. Bush on JStor. > And once he is out of office there will be no lack of biogaphies written > to analyze his presidency. >> > > First to attack your second point, why does W have to be out of office to > have a biography ? There are several books about Bush out, which analyze > his > presidency. >
Mhm. His presidency hasn't even ended yet. So the only thing we could possibly find would be books on, say, the first term of his presidency or "the first term of his presidency + 2 years of his second presidency" and still, I would be rather reluctant to cite these... If you want to seriously review a thing such as a presidency, you will always want to have at least some distance to it, for various reasons (hint: most archive material from the Bush administration is not accessible at all yet). > I do not (in any way) feel that "academics" have any toe-hold on > "biography". In fact, professional writers, tend not to be in academia at > all, and they > write prose that is much more interesting (apparently from their book > sales) > then academics. Oh sure. Moreover, what the Sun writes is much more interesting (apparently from their newspaper sales) than what the Guardian or the Times write. So let's rely on the Sun for our future encyclopedic coverage. > > We are not an academic encyclopedia anymore than we are a science one, a > religion one or a fancruft one. In trying to represent the world as it is, > we > must use what resources are present. In general, for biographies, > newspapers > and hard-cover biographies, are much more *present* and readable than > anything in a humanities journal. We're not trying to be technical as we > can be, > we're also trying to attract more readership. > We're trying to be as serious, neutral and fact-based as we can. We're not a tabloid, we don't want to attract more readership by having the most juiciest stories, irrespective of their accuracy respectively verifiability. > > So again it's a balance. But by *ALL* means, if you have peer-reviewed > biographical material, add it. However "peer review" is not necessarily > the > standard for all articles. TV Guide is not "peer reviewed" and yet we > assume > it's a reliable source for what's on TV > > Yes. But we don't assume TV Guide's description of the movie "W" )or any documentary on the topic) to be a reliable source of analysis of Bush's presidency. Michael -- Michael Bimmler mbimm...@gmail.com _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
