Cite?
I usually use Google Books to find cites, but ran into the limitations of how many pages I could view, so off to eBay. The system works! As cool as Google Books is, it is a lot easier to go through a paper book with a pad of sticky notes looking for references.
Why would anyone assume I was kidding? This is a hobby, and buying $25 worth of used books is damn cheap as hobbies go.
One form of advertising that would not be out of place on Wikipedia would be links to books referenced. A discrete Amazon purchase button would be a useful service and generate a revenue stream.
Betcha he found that info on Wikipedia.
This is totally untrue. The philosophy is that one should be be forced, nor felt they are forced, to give something to anyone. It does not say that one can’t give money to every bum on the street if they so choose even though that will not benefit the giver. I give money and time all the time, none of it directly benefits me, I do so because I choose to do so and that’s the point.
I guess I just assumed the majority of articles were the result of dozens of people working together, providing one or two cites at a time, not one editor with a pile of references.
Nothing wrong with that, mind you, I’m just impressed 
I’ve written a few articles myself, but mostly with Internet cites. I’m just blown away that people still have time to read books and write whole reports from them.
Yes, Objectivism is often criticised by people who haven’t made any effort to understand it.
Depends on the article. Expand the History page of any article to 500 and look through it, and you’ll find a handful of editors have made a large number of contributions - or a few revisions that have substantially improved the article. The problem with a large number of editors is that they do not produce a consistent style. After working on an article for a while and getting to a point where I’m reasonably happy with it, I’ll read the text out loud to my wife. That will reveal a lot of errors, omissions and bad writing.
Heh…when you put it like that…what AM I doing spending most evenings writing book reports? Oh yeah, I’m a huge geek.
As I mentioned earlier, I use Google Books, but too many useful sources are only available in “Snippet” view, which makes citation pretty much impossible. I prefer a book or journal reference over any random web site as the references are unlikely to disappear. Google could shut down Google Books (Og forbid!), but the rest of the cite remains and anyone can find that book or magazine in a library.
My proudest moment so far was when my research on a topic wound up being used in a scholarly work on that subject.
Sorry it took me so long to get back to this. Buncha things, not the least of which was two horrendous commutes on Monday and Tuesday. Don’t ask.
Thanks for the responses, especially the links. Always good to have good, hard numbers.
Eh. Maybe I’ll pitch in something, if only so I’ll feel a little better.