Existence ≠ Notability := Bad editing experience.

Tgeorgescu, I hear you - but the entire RS edifice itself can be laborious and off-putting - especially when you find editors (and editor groups) who are viciously protective (and often incredibly biased) over their own watchlists.

But there is a problem with this too - the untrained tend to go in with a great deal of enthusiasm, even if they often have a rather narrow viewpoint, and there is a definite lack of humility in certain areas of the editorial field.

Wnt's position is also a valid one - I have been told at times that such and such an academic commentator is a PS, or out of date, or whatever - just because their peer-reviewed academic publications took place in another civilisation. There are entire cultures of academic development that still have deeper analysis within their domain than the academics of the current era; this is most especially true regarding the academics belonging to the great religions, but (IMO) highlighted most by the extensive academic literature of the Tibetan monastic universities (up until the moveable type printing press, there were more publications in Tibetan than every other language put together, and yet up until 1980's 'Western' academics of Buddhism and Buddhist philosophy relied almost exclusively on Pali, Sanskrit and Chinese sources). In certain areas, most Western academics are still six centuries or more behind contemporary Tibetan academic development.

None of this really advances my view:- that NOT is unnecessary and redundant, as long as we maintain both RS and COI (20040302)

I can easily see why the English Wikipedia relies upon English language scholarship and news: it is easier to trust and understand scholars who write in English, it is easier to trust scholars educated and doing research according to the Western model, it is easier to trust mainstream English language press (instead of say the Libyan TV, since Western journalists are not forced to write patriotic or pro-Western articles, but I assume that censorship rules in Libyan press). I think that it is no secret that in many disciplines most of the cutting edge research is published in English. How about discussing Pali scholarship on the Pali Wikipedia? For translating it to English, you cannot be sure that you used the correct translation of a concept, since other Pali editors could have different translation for the same Pali word. So, in lack of English translations and English language scholarship, it is difficult to evaluate scholarship done in Pali. And there is yet another requirement, that of being verifiable. This means that secret writings cannot be trusted, since other editors cannot have access to such sources. In general, sources are verifiable if they are published, in journals, books, newspapers, websites, etc.