On 8/30/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca> wrote:
Adrian wrote:
Seriously, why can't we? We're getting
swamped with fan-writing on all
sorts of topics, much of it related to popular culture.
I just hit "random page" ten times. I got articles about:
*disambiguation page for two shahs of Persia
*a road in Cambridgeshire
*a political party in Nicuragua
*an Asterix and Obelix film
*a primitive genus of civet-like hyena
*a well-known victim of a gay-bashing murder in Canada
*a taxon containing the placental mammals (factual accuracy disputed)
*the debut solo album by the former White Zombie singer Rob Zombie
*a line of Nash automobiles produced from 1932 until 1957
*a Hindi film about homelessness in New York
It's just a glimpse, of course, and doesn't take into account relative
article size, but it doesn't look like Wikipedia is being "swamped" with
fan writing. It would be interesting to see a more rigorous and
statistically significant sampling of Wikipedia's coverage by area.
Actually, thanks to categories, it might even be possible to get an
exhaustive analysis of Wikipedia's subject area coverage. I wonder if
anyone's done something like that before.
Good point. It's theoretically possible that a lot of the "in popular
culture" junk people complain about is in tacked-on trivia sections at the
end of articles, or gigantic "X in popular culture..." articles. The number
of articles may not necessarily reflect the actual composition of the
'pedia.
Johnleemk