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Originally Posted by Andrew
For dissemination of information (both accurate and inaccurate) Wikipedia is a wonderful vehicle.
However, if one aspires to scholarly writing, publishing in a peer-reviewed journal is preferred. If the author can retain publishing rights, it can be reposted in the public domain, or otherwise referenced on the internet...
(I, incidentally, have no such aspirations or ability.  ) |
Andrew, the accuracy of any Wikipedia article depends entirely on the knowledge and research abilities of the people who create and contribute to an article, they can be very scholarly or absolute nonsense. If someone can create a peer reviewed article and retain the rights to use the information contained in it elsewere then that is a good situation all around, but that is not always the case.
"Scholary journal/magazine" etc may not quote from Wikpedia but on the other hand the average person will never read that "scholary journal/magazine" so your information will just be available to a handful of acedamics, this is satisfactory to some people but if you actually want people to read and learn from what you have researched then sometimes compromises are needed.
Some subjects can not really be peer reviewed, if no acedemic has any real knowledge of a certain subject and it has not been researched and published already what will they base their review on. Here is an example, my Wikipedia article on Japanese karuta armor is the only one like it in the world, no book or article explains it better and it is available for anyone to see and use. It provides all the basic information, references and images needed to understand what karuta armor is. If this was published in a "Scholary journal/magazine" no one would see it except a handful of uninterested academics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karuta_(armour)
For the more scholary types academia.edu may be of interest.
https://www.academia.edu/about