On 1/11/06, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
There's a specialist topic that's about to
create its own wiki. In
discussion on a board, one person said "Why not just use Wikipedia?
What you're describing is identical." Another responded with: "No,
some 15 year old moron will mark it for deletion just because they
know nothing about it."
Unlikely. The problem is the people who do know a little about it.
People don't tend to delete the maths stuff because they don't
understand it at all. People do understand webcomics a little with the
result that they feel they know enough to list them on afd.
So that's part of our public image now. Well done
alienating webcomics
authors, i.e. creators of memes and popular culture on the net.
Evidence that there is in fact a link here? Generaly if you look at
the spred of info about wikipedia across weforums webcomic are not
mentioned.
Not to mention the way the webcomics AC case ended:
AFD trolls now
have the all-clear to work actively to alienate actual experts,
because the self-professed ignorant are now *officially* to be
considered equal to those who have an actual bloody clue.
I was amazed knowledge of it had spread so far. Jimbo, you heard about
this example at the recent UK Wikimedia meet (the doll collectors) -
this was actually an independent example from the same field.
Why? Pretty much any forum on the web you go to has at least one
thread on wikipedia these days. We can't hide stuff any more.
Experts from fields that actually haven't been
alienated literally
don't think it's worth bothering to try writing in Wikipedia any more.
Is there anything we can do to rehabilitate Wikipedia's image in the
outside world?
Without changeing it's fundimental structure? Not really. If you are
going to write about areas of popular culture there are going to be
other people around and they are sometimes going to dissagree with
you.
(yes, geni, I know you're happy to be rid of
annoying specialist experts)
No I'd accept them also decideing not be anoying.
--
geni