[WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

[Ray Saintonge]

Stan Shebs wrote:

>Philip Sandifer wrote:
>  
>
>>And it's a disaster that can be laid squarely at the feet of the  
>>grotesque axis of [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:N]] - two pages that are eating  
>>Wikipedia alive from the inside out. (And I don't mean this in terms  
>>of community. I mean that they are systematically being used to turn  
>>good articles into crap, and have yet to demonstrate their actual use  
>>in turning bad articles into good ones.)
>>    
>>
>I can relate to this - just today I had an uninformed editor claim one 
>of the world's famous postage stamps is "non-notable" because the 
>article only has one reference - apparently the part where the reference 
>is a page in the most authoritative works in philately doesn't matter, 
>because he couldn't manage to find it mentioned more than once online. 
>The mind boggles at the multiple incompetences, but since it's all done 
>with templates, even the least capable of editors is enabled to cast 
>aspersions on good content.
>
Not long ago there was a proposal to relocate the items that appear on 
AfD to the various WikiProjects so that the requests could be looked at 
by people who have some understanding of the issue.  As usual that got 
nowhaere.

>Even so, I understand why the guidelines were created, to close 
>loopholes that have been discovered and exploited. Alternate ideas that 
>don't rely on magical thinking are still welcome.
>
The sad part is that many who quote or apply the rules have absolutely 
no understanding of what went into producing those rules.

Ec