Re: [Bug-gnupedia] Question for Nupedia

[Jimmy Wales]

Yes, I think that we are planning to implement RMS's exclusionary
rule.  We have to talk to the community, of course, to get a consensus,
but I don't foresee any major obstacles.

We currently follow an even stronger exclusionary rule, by the way!
Our articles do not link to *any* outside content, free or not.  This
is mostly just a pragamatic thing, as we didn't want to get involved
with maintaining a huge database of links.  We aren't a web directory,
we're an encyclopedia.  This is not to be regarded as a permanent rule,
though, just a short-term technical matter.  It really hasn't been an
issue yet.

Also, RMS has indicated to me that links to primary historical sources,
solely as background material, can be o.k. under his exclusionary rule.
As RMS said in his article "The Free Universal Encyclopedia and Learning
Resource":

>However, only some kinds of information belongs in an
>encyclopedia. For example, scholarly papers, detailed statistical data
>bases, news reports, fiction and art, extensive bibliographies, and
>catalogs of merchandise, useful as they are, are outside the scope of
>an encyclopedia. (Some of the articles might usefully contain links to
>such works.)

So, we might include (in the future) links to that sort of thing.
We would always prefer, of course, that the links be to free content.



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