Wikipedia as the sole secondary?
Now that I know I can’t retire off my Mega Millions winnings this week, I got back to thinking of books I’d love to write. A history book is right up there, and I started wondering about writing an entire history book relying on Wikipedia as the sole source.
Would the entire thing be obsolete the day it was published, thanks to new edits in the source material online?
What if I just wrote the book in some online format itself, and have the sources update as they change? How cool would that be?
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I’m not sure it would work. Good history books have a flow to them that I don’t think you would get from just including articles from wikipedia. You’d get something that jumped around and lacked smooth transitions. But than I’m only a small fan of wikipedia. I see it as a short cut for when you don’t have the need or time to do real research. I wrote about that on my own blog recently.