On Sep 10, 2005, at 12:04 PM, Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
Such topic areas _are_ problems. The solution isn't clear.
I think the solution is perfectly clear. We fix the articles at a reasonable rate. We accept that referencing is hard, and that it's not going to be done as fast as any of us like. Those who are knowledgeable about the subject do what they can. But we're volunteers. And the job of going and finding references sucks. It's why I don't contribute to critical theory articles anymore. The push to reference has left it feeling too much like my job.
What do we really lose by having 100 mediocre-to-crappy articles on obscure Pokemon? I mean, yes, I lose sanity if I try to read them, but if they just sort of exist? The only thing I can think of that we might lose is some respect. Here's the thing, though - this project is four years old. We've built a pretty damn good encyclopedia in four years. But anyone who expects this project to be "done" (Whatever that means) or even close to "done" is being daft. Yes, Wikipedia is a cause celebre in the online world right now. But we can't let that push us into trying to sweep "cruft" under the carpet because we're kind of embarassed that we have more Pokemon articles than philosophy articles (Or whatever unfortunate statement that's actually true you want to put in here).
The answer is to just say, "Hey, glad you see the potential in the project. We agree, we're not there yet. Grab a keyboard and start helping if you like. Otherwise, well, we'll keep on it. Check back in another four years - we'll knock your socks off." And this is OK. We're not going anywhere. Even if we lose the cause celebre status and fall out of the top 100 on Alexa (Which I doubt we ever will), that's OK - it just means we work with a smaller base of contributors for a few years, and come back later with stories about how "Wikipedia, much maligned for having more information on Pokemon than philosophy, has finally come into its own."
And, honestly, I'd rather get it right in 2009 than decide in 2005 that wrong is good enough.
-Snowspinner