On 10/7/05, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Yes, but these are not exactly obscure people. If he went and found an article on an obscure 13th century poet which was crap, I would be not quite as bothered. But Jane Fonda? Bill Gates?
But clearly "obscurity" is not the factor which determines a good or bad article. Plenty of articles on obscure people are very good and plenty articles on very simple things can be quite bad. But still, he did not, of course, give any rationale for these two articles except that they exemplify the fact that Wikipedia is edited by amateurs and sometimes has spotty content. So what? Oh, the Bill Gates article should be better. I think it *is* a bit better since he looked at it. Bill Gates is a major figure, no doubt. Jane Fonda is not obscure but the world doesn't revolve around her, either -- she's a U.S. actress who has gotten press because of a few of her political stances she took in the 1960s.
But nobody's making excuses here. I'm just saying that you will always be able to find sore spots if you want to. If you believe in the Wikipedia way, what you do is try to fix them or call them to the attention to others. If you don't, then you write pissy articles about them.
I don't think it's worth taking such criticisms too seriously, because they boil down to "Wikipedia articles are sometimes spotty and written poorly." Well, that's no surprise to anyone. That's not why it's popular, that's not why it's interesting, and that's not why it's a good project.
We're not making software, here -- just because some parts of it are spotty doesn't mean the entire package won't work. In that way we're a lot less restrained than the open source software projects and can afford to have a philosophy of eventualism.
Well, I don't agree. It is my intention that we be valued for completeness and coherency and "brilliant prose" *as well as* for being freely licensed, with magnificent breadth and speed and usefulness, etc.
There will always be places on Wikipedia without brilliant prose, and there will be places with it. Those who want to value us on our strengths will. Those who don't, won't.
FF