QUOTE(Grep @ Tue 13th October 2009, 1:07pm)
QUOTE(The Wales Hunter @ Tue 13th October 2009, 7:35pm)
Problem here - if Wikipedia/the WMF/whoever don't keep a track of these kind of books, does that mean an inaccurate Wikipedia article could become a book and the book could then become the source for the inaccuracy in the article? Etc, etc, etc.
Yes. This is precisely why Wikipedia is a danger to the whole foundation of human knowledge.
It wouldn't be the first time that the popular version of history (whatever make the best story) BECOMES history. But WP is certainly in danger of doing this more pervasively than at any time before.
An old joke is that Russia is a country with an unstable past. (IMG:
smilys0b23ax56/default/wink.gif) But horrid truth, Comrade, is that all countries have an unstable history, which is the story of the past and nearly all we know about, save for the occasional new documentary find and archeological evidence. History is constantly being reinterpreted through the fresh eyes of new generations of historians, but now we reach a world in which it is in danger of being reinterpreted though the fresh eyes of a generation of unwashed ignorant masses. And thus mythologized again, almost as in the days when history consisted of changable sagas instead of less mutable written records.