On 8/31/06, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/30/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Sounds good. But fergoshsakes just put the info in a table. Worst thing about the town rambot articles is that they're pretty crappy prose but it never gets edited, ever; second is that the demographic information came from a table and should be presented as a table, not as crappy prose.
Yeah. I bet over time the crappy prose of all these town articles will slowly be edited in different directions, becoming different, equally crappy, prose.
I was tempted to edit one once, then realised how many times I'd have to repeat my work. Eek.
And since we're having a whinge, the other problem with an article like that is you think it's actually fairly complete. You'd think that 3-4 paragraphs of text would be a decent amount for a small town. Whereas it covers the demographics, and that's it - no history, no geography, no "the construction of a Walmart caused uproar in 2005".
Steve _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
G'day folks,
Personally, I think that a comprehensive coverage of towns is one of our strengths at least in the first world. If there was verifiable concern in a town over the construction of a Walmart, I have no problem with our article saying it.
If someone wants to write about the history and geography of their local area from reliable sources more power to their arm. We have had a number of Featured Articles on towns and things that wouldn't be listed in traditional encyclopedias. This, in my view, is a good thing.
We probably need more on local areas in third world countries but that will come. We had a featured article on Central Asian history recently for example which is encouraging.
If someone wants to write articles on asteroids and other astronomical bodies from reliable sources, good on them. If people looking for that information come to Wikipedia, that is beneficial.
It definitely falls within my understanding of the Sum of all Human Knowledge.
Regards to all
Keith Old