[WikiEN-l] Apposite commentary on Wikipedia's arts coverage

[geni]

2008/9/18 David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>:
>  http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2008/sep/18/wikipedia.goya
>


Culture clash. "Art is not science. That is, the "facts" about art
don't take you very far." we are not interested in taking people
anywhere we are interested in informing them.

"What I mean to say is, any decent art reference book, however
serious, will offer an argument to explain why it is imparting facts
about Goya."

Wikipedia on the other hand take the view that the person chose to
read the article and we can safely assume they have their reasons for
doing so. We do not judge between someone trying to increase their
cultural understanding and a school pupil looking to throw together an
essay.

Wikipedia articles are aiming to tell you about the subject not
provide a narrative. Most of the ah flair in the english language
exists to argue points and often to paper over a lack of actually
facts. Wikipedia is meant to reject both of these approaches.

Wikipedia does not lead you on a winding trail where you pick flowers
of information along the way. Wikipedia instead takes information
concentrates it and fires it at you at high speed. What happens to you
afterwards is not really our concern.

On top of that wikipedia prose has to be constructed in a way that is
robust enough that it can withstand further information being inserted
just about anywhere which reduces the amount of use beautiful but
delicate prose you are likely to see.

Wikipedia takes this further with infoboxes.

So does wikipedia writing tend to be rather flat compared to other
sources? yes. Is this really a problem? no.

-- 
geni