As one of those responsible for associating the phrase "low-hanging
fruit" with Wikipedia, perhaps I should say a few words.
I won't argue that there is no end to what articles Wikipedia could be
written, or can be written with a surprisingly small amount of work.
For example, a few weeks ago I thumbed through my copy of the
Petersen's Field Guide to the Sea Shells of the Pacific coast,
intending to compare the species it describes to unwritten articles.
I began -- & stopped -- with Abelone, having found in 10 minutes a
few dozen candidates. These articles would be stubs, but fairly
informative ones. I could probably take at random any 5 books from
my own collection and use them to create a dozen non-stub articles.
I don't write that as a boast; I suspect that most of you on this
mailing list could do the same thing.
But we're different from the average person who wants (or is told)
to write an article for Wikipedia. For one thing, most of them are
high-school students or undergraduates, & the information that
Wikipedia has already is far more comprehensive than what the average
teenager could identify, research and write about in an afternoon --
let alone knows exists. Further, it is probably far more comprehensive
than the average adult in those respects. I'd say that the average
subject coverage in Wikipedia has reached the level where anyone who
wants to improve it either has to know something about the subject
(in contrast to the usual research technique of a Google search,
consulting an encyclopedia, or half-heartedly looking through the
card catalog of a public library), or is motivated to actually learn
something about the subject.
Maybe this is an indictment of the educational system, but I think
it is, in one sense, an affirmation of an observation Jimbo once made,
years ago: writing an encyclopedia is an unusual hobby. Not everyone
is interested in actually learning about a subject: most people, I
have found, are content to use the first hit on Google, the news report
from their favorite television channel, the definition in their
dictionary, the current revision of a Wikipedia article.
I suspect this is related to the fact that although the English language
has upwards of 400,000 words, the vocabulary of the average fluent
English speaker is around 15,000 words. One can't expand that number
by harvesting a few thousand words from a dictionary; one has to
actually learn the meanings of these words & learn how to use them.
But one can get along quite well with those 15,000 words.
That is the reason for my metaphor; most people are willing to settle
for the low-hanging fruit & wind-falls; only a few will bother to use
a ladder to get to more of the fruit, & even fewer are willing to climb
to the tops of the trees to get every last one. I'd like to think that
this majority at least will do a good job of gleaning, & maybe help
improve the most read subjects to FA status. This is a more positive
vision than one where, because writing an encyclopedia is such an
unusual hobby the finite & small number interested in that hobby
scratches has joined Wikipedia, the stress caused by the free-for-all
Wikipedia can often become has driven most away, & the community has
dwindled to one Admin & five malcontents working to get him banned
for 3RR violations.
Geoff