Avoiding making this a de facto RFC on a given article...
I've been getting into a fairly nasty feud on a popular culture article in which I added an "academic criticism" section, summarizing articles I could find on the subject.
This seems to me well-supported by numerous policies. But it has proven inordinately contentious, and contentious in what seems to me particularly pernicious ways - the articles (from peer-reviewed journals) have been compared to blog posts and fancruft, declared non- notable (not that notability determines article content), and the sections have been accused of being jargon-filled (which, they are, yes, but we're dealing with criticism in the humanities. It's jargon- filled, and the jargon doesn't translate to everyday words easily, or else we wouldn't use the jargon).
I'm very, very troubled by this, for a number of reasons. For one thing, it seems to me to cheapen Wikipedia, miring us in the everyday and the simple. I am unable to think of anyone who would seriously criticize an encyclopedia for excessively covering peer-reviewed, academic scholarship. Covering academic criticism of any subject should be a goal for us. It should be the goal for us.
But apparently this position is not only not widely held, but an incredible minority position.
Am I crazy? Did I just get a bad bunch of people conversing on the article, such that I should spill the article name and get the sanity brigade on it? Or are we really of the opinion that peer-reviewed academic criticism is a non-notable perspective on a subject?
-Phil