[WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

[John Lee]

On 2/27/07, T P <t0m0p0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> That depends on what we want Wikipedia to be.  If we want it to be the
> elaborated union of all existing encyclopedias, no matter how specialized,
> fine.  But what we want Wikipedia to be is not to be decided strictly
> based
> on the opinions of experts.  Citizendium is --> that way.
>
> I think people are jumping to conclusions about my point.  My point is not
> that webcomics should not be included.  My point is that Scout McCloud's
> evaluation of notability should not carry more weight than the consensus
> of
> the people writing Wikipedia.  If he wants to change Wikipedia he's
> welcome
> to join us in writing it.
>
> Adam


I think something's been missed in the rush here. First of all, many of us
(including myself, a longtime member of the Association of Deletionist
Wikipedians - not that it means anything) have always thought that Wikipedia
exists as an encyclopaedia. Not a general encyclopaedia, not a specific
encyclopaedia, an encyclopaedia. If you can find published sources about
something, then it's in. There's not really a much better way to solve the
problem of deciding what's in and what's out, except through the question of
notability.

Now, regarding notability, I think it's become a bit outmoded. Notability as
a concept stems from the VfD days when we could not find valid reasons to
delete an article, but the community agreed that it was not suitable for WP.
Nowadays, almost any article that deserves to be deleted can be deleted
without resort to notability. Typically, the article is unverifiable,
innately biased, or whatever.

I think one of the worst things that has happened WRT deletion is the
codification of notability - ironically as an attempt to make something
subjective objective because inclusionists kept demanding that we have
objective criteria for deletion. Notability is a placeholder concept for
common sense. The trouble is, as WP scaled up, we got a lot more
contributors without enough common sense to think about what they're doing,
and so we decided to codify notability instead of either getting rid of it
as outmoded, or finding some other way to keep common sense around for those
who can use their noggins.

I really can't see the argument against including something that a
specialist encyclopaedia (which is often a tertiary source) has an article
about, unless the encyclopaedia itself is a primary source on the subject.
Sure, a lot of the crap is trivial - I couldn't care less about some vintage
postage stamp of which only half a dozen were ever made, or about some
ridiculous Pokemon character. But if they're verifiable, they're in. The
only question is whether we can keep enough common sense about ourselves,
and get our editors to write these articles as they should be written,
instead of dribbling over them like crazed fans (as happens so often with
fiction-related articles).

As for the question of experts, I think this notion that WP is completely
egalitarian is totally fictitious. From day one, some Wikipedians have been
considered more qualified and worthy of having their opinions heard than
others. WP is not a vote, and not all WPians have equal standing. This is
just how it has always been, because if everyone is equal, if everyone has
the same voice, then we are effectively an anarchy - which, contrary to what
some might think, is not what WP is. We have some hierarchical structure -
it's just very loose because often we don't need to rely on it.

When it comes to borderline issues, though, I think there has to be some
external force acting on people to ensure we don't go overboard. This goes
for whether we are having a content dispute, edit war, or yes, a borderline
AfD. Until now, the only people whose voices have counted more have
generally been Wikipedians. But I see no reason to exclude experts
completely either from having a voice in how things go.

The demand that experts participate in WP is, I think, a little excessive.
Many of these people don't have the time to participate, or don't think of
it as a fruitful use of their time. That's not a reason to ignore them,
however. The voices of experts should be given a little gravity, instead of
completely ignored. In the past, we have deferred to the interests of people
with a vested interest in the outcome of things, even when they have not
said a word - Brian Peppers comes to mind. Here, someone without a vested
interest - an objective observer - is commenting on an article, and yet we
choose to ignore him. I don't see the logic in that.

If an article truly does not belong on Wikipedia, there are usually much
better arguments to be made than "delete, nn". One problem I can think of
with webcomics is verifiability - how many of them have been written about
in a secondary source? There shouldn't be a need to apply notability except
in the real borderline cases which a policy/guideline has never encountered
before (i.e. the real outliers). Notability should always be a last, not a
first resort, and experts ought to be given weight. We shouldn't blindly
accept anything they say, but neither should we reject them out of hand
simply because of this false notion that WP is egalitarian and that you need
to be a Wikipedian to have a say in what goes on here.

Johnleemk