I kinda like the title of Bibliographic Researching Expert.

I’m not a historian (although some of my other writing starts to resemble history), but remembering a series of civil war lectures by the new breed of historians (returning to source data), I’ d say “no” on both counts. To serve as a repository for source data, Wikipedia would have to abandon the “notability rule” altogether–after all, for new civil war history work, the historians are looking at the letters and journals of the “everyday” people involved in the war, not just the Notable Figures.

But that’s already saying more than I really know. As a reader, I want narrative. As a sometimes-investigator and frequent writer, I want both narrative and access to source material.

That said, as a historian of sorts, I am suspicious of narrative. I like to see the bones of history. For something like Alexander, narrative too often smoothes over difficulties of sources or interpretation, so to the extent that Wikipedia’s fragmented production can voice these issues, I cheer it.

On balance, however, I think the loss is greater than the gain.

Technically, you’re probably right.

Realistically, it doesn’t feel to me as though most tweets are intended to function like (most contemporary) blog posts.

I guess, to me, that “microblogs” has the same feel that “miniarticles” would if you applied it to blog posts… Maybe technically justifiable, but it feels wrong–to me. As always, YMMV.