[WikiEN-l] "Exclusion" essay

[Oldak Quill]

The last section on "Imaginary universes" seems out of keeping with
the rest of the essay. Articles about things in imaginary universes
are usually very well maintained and monitored by a high number of
users. Conflicts rarely serve as distractions and, since we are not
paper, they do little to harm us fiscally.

The following sentence makes obvious the real reason for you dislike
of these articles, elitism: "The harm is mostly the maintenance of
large numbers of pages, and to our reputation: a serious
encyclopedia".

Ultimately, and sadly, it is not hard to imagine that more people wish
to read about [[Bulbasaur]] than [[Operation Barbarossa]]. I,
personally, am not a fan of Pokemon at all, but I certainly don't
object to articles on Pokemon characters if they are factually
accurate and verifiable. These articles are of great interest to some,
they bring thousands of users to Wikipedia and they do no harm. What
is more, no other article will *ever* be placed at Bulbasaur or
Pikachu and, if they were, a simple disambiguation would be required.

With all this in mind the only reason I can see for your objection to
them is that traditional encyclopedias would not have such articles.
Traditional encyclopedias would not have the space or the expertise
for these articles. They did not need or want to appeal to teenagers
and teenagers interests, we can and do.

-- 
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)