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| ``Re: Occam's Razor, PM vs. WIkipedia''
by rspuzio on 2004-10-14 19:41:49 |
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| As I see it, the two main issues here are convenience of the reader and not wasting resources.
At present, there are a bunch of websites which offer free mathematical information to the public --- in addition to to Planet Math and Wikipedia, there are, for instance, AGATHOS and the catalogue of algebraic systems.
Since there are several such sites, it can be inconvenient for the reader to have to look through a dozen websites to find a particular piece of information. Therefore, having some sort of "one-stop shopping" would be nice.
As for scarcity, there are two resources to be considered. On the one hand, there is storage space. In this age of DVDs and gigabyte laptops, there is no shortage of storage. On the other hand, there is the labour needed to keep these websites going and write articles. This resource is definitely in short supply, so it should not be wasted.
These considerations lead me to the following conclusions: 1) There should be a way for a reader to access the combined content of all these websites in a coherent form. 2) It is wasteful to spend time writing up stuff which is already available when there are so many mathematical topics which have not yet been entered.
The question is what to do. As I see it, the ideal solution would be to have a website which serves as a combined front-end for all these websites. If, for instance, one looks up "group" in such a front-end, one would see the Planet Math entry on "group", the Wikipedia entry on "group", the entry in the catalogue for algebraic systems, .... A benefit of this arrangement is that it takes some of the legal and ethical burden off of the websites which provide the information. The biggest drawback to this suggestion is that it takes a lot of work to set up and maintain such a website.
Another possible solution is for authors to have and unwritten agreement to cross-post their contributions. This way, there would be no ethical qualms about one website copying content from another since the author did the copying. The disadvantage I see to this proposal is the potential for the same article to evolve into different forms. What I mean is this: Suppose I post a theorem to both Planet Math and Wikipedia. As time goes on, the Planet Math entry will be revised in response to suggestions and corrections and the Wikipedia entry will be modified by other Wikipedia members. As I see it there is no feasible way of dealing with this which does not involve either a) having both versions of the same entry linked at the same website or b) having the author also agree to keep the two versions in agreement which would involve much work of the author and might might not sit well with the policies on some of the sites.
A third option, which I consider the most practical, is something like what Matte did with the "Ockham's razor" entry. That is to say, Planet Math could include links to entries on other websites providing that a) there were no legal issues and noone fconnected with the other website would be upset and b) it would be clear that these were simply links to definitions found elsewhere for the convenience of the reader so nobody would accuse anyone of trying to take credit for other people's work.
Personally, I am for the idea of providing links to all the Wikipedia articles on math. As long as it is clearly stated somewhere that these links are being provided for the convenience of the reader and that providing as linking to an article on another website is not to be construed as an endorsement or certification of correctness, I don't think there should be any problems. If the Wikipedia article is incorrect or incomplete, it seems that there would be two obvious courses of action --- either edit that article or write a more suitable article and post it here. In the latter case, both the link to the off-site article and the on-site article would appear next to each other in the listing, so the reader has a choice.
Ray |
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