William Pietri schrieb:
I agree that the serious articles should be better, but in these comparisons there seems to be an implicit theory that the fan topics are somehow sucking the life out of the serious ones.
That's not my reading of it. Pop culture articles should be just as well-referenced and consistently written as all other articles. Why not compare pop culture articles with *better* pop culture articles? There's always room for improvement, and maybe a bit more of that for some specimen of the pop culture article.
But really, do we want somebody obsessed about [[Optimus Prime]] to spend a lot of time on [[Prime number]]? And even if we wanted them to, would they do it and do it well? I don't think so.
No, but we wouldn't want them to spend time on [[Optimus Prime]] either if they -for all their undoubtedly good intentions- can't curb their fan enthusiasm for the sake of actually improving the article and thereby Wikipedia.
First is that the more editors we have involved in Wikipedia, the better.
I respect that as your opinion. I'd say the *better* editors we have involved in Wikipedia, the better.
all sorts of positive effects, including less vandalism, more donations, more person-to-person promotion, and more public support.
I wouldn't necessarily agree on any of that.
And second, people look this stuff up. Your average Joe's impression of the value of Wikipedia is going to depend directly on how frequently and how well we answer the questions they are wondering about. Maybe they *should* be wondering about tau neutrinos, but a lot of people are going to start out wondering about Scrappy Doo, and will be delighted to learn that the character was based on the chickenhawk in the Foghorn Leghorn cartoons. Maybe that's not as good as them learning about neutrinos, but I think each little success like that is still a win for Wikipedia.
William (Mr. Pietri?), yes they do look this stuff up and I believe it is not only an advantage to have articles on pop culture topics, but Wikipedia has them as a matter of course. But how about encouraging users interested in a certain topic *to improve on their improvements* of their favourite articles? Yes, many are doing a decent job or die trying, but there's always room and also the willingness --eagerness, ideally-- to learn something more, at least for someone I'd want as an editor.
I wouldn't e.g. want a mature Star Wars fan --hard to believe, but there are those-- reading all those unreferenced articles lacking any real world perspective. So why not improve our structures of giving helpful advice to editors, and yes, forcing the concept some? We need a culture of mutual teaching and learning, of improving not only the articles according to one's pwn ideads, but also one's own contributions -- a culture of welcoming criticism by others as a chance of learning something new. And you don't get that by simply letting everything slide because it's "just" (not my opinion!) pop culture articles.
We shouldn't shy away from raising a well-meaning educational finger where it's necessary and potentially useful. Much better than either using said finger to klick the block button or living with lesser articles.
The assumpton that the majority of editors are mature people and willing to go out of their way to improve Wikipedia not according to their own private ideas and preconceptons, but according to Wikipedia's standards is, well, possibly true but I wouldn't take a bet.