[WikiEN-l] "Exclusion" essay

[Oldak Quill]

> Please don't put words in my mouth. While your hypothetical example is
> extreme, I would still find it wrong only for technical reasons - each
> fight description would be rather short and low on context, they'd do
> much better IMO as something like [[List of Pokémon battles]]
> (subdivided by season if one page is too large). It's not a random
> collection of information if we apply uniform standards of quality and
> structure to it.
>
> I don't see how the "fancruft" we include is any more a "random
> collection of information" than the vast amounts of sportscruft,
> militarycruft, politiciancruft, and other sorts of subjectcruft that for
> some reason have an air of respectability about it that recent popular
> culture alone seems to lack. Who ever complains about how Wikipedia has
> articles for almost every ship that happened to participate in WWII, no
> matter how trivial its role? Or how there are articles about people
> whose sole claim to fame is an unspectacular one-year Senate position in
> Smallcounty, Iowa back in the 1820s?
>
> I think the massive inclusiveness of Wikipedia is one of its best
> traits. Wikipedia is like a specialist encyclopedia that specializes in
> _everything_. When I see an article about an obscure topic I don't ask
> myself "should there be an article about this in a general
> encyclopedia?", I ask myself "should there be an article about this in
> an Encyclopedia of Stamp Collecting, or Encyclopedia of Star Trek, or
> Encyclopedia of 18th Century Railroading, or Encyclopedia of
> Agriculture, etc.?"


Well, you've done a better job of writing my opinion than I did. I
completely agree with your every point.


-- 
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)