Your comments are fascinating, and I think they bring into relief a very different vision of what wp should be from mine. That is why I ask the question about schools, to try to see what we can agree on in terms of what the content of our 'ideal' wp would be.
I think the Rambot articles are a great start, and a place to build from, yes, the tabular data is not enough, but it is a springboard.
The same with schools - perhaps we need a schoolbot to make all the schools with tabular data, then fill in the rest by hand?
Mark
--- "Daniel P.B.Smith" dpbsmith@verizon.net wrote:
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Compendium
So, to try to avoid the constant posturing for a while, how does this help us to navigate the
different
understandings of what should and should not go
in?
Are you in favour or against schools, for example?
I
can't really tell from your message.
- That wasn't the purpose of the message. Someone
had used the phrase "compendium of human knowledge" as if it meant "everything." I was pointing out that the word "compedium" implies _selection._ And I was pointing out that, while acknowledging Wikipedia is _different_ from other encyclopedias, the word _encyclopedia_ does imply an emphasis on certain kinds of "knowledge" over others.
- If you frame the question in the form "are you in
favor of or against schools" you would not be able to understand any answer I could give. Watch my behavior in VfD and make your own deductions.
It would seem that your definition would exclude
many
RamBot articles?
I'm a pragmatist. I don't think the Rambot articles on towns were a good idea, but I accept them as a fait accompli. No, I do not think they fall within even a loose definition of an encyclopedia. They are database tabular data that's been gussied up into pseudo-English. They're here. I'm not going to use any of my own psychic energy on a crusade to get rid of them. If someone else tries to get rid of them, I won't waste any of my own psychic energy trying to stop them. I believe these feelings of mine are fairly widely shared, by the way.
The thing I hate most about the Rambot articles is people citing them as precedent for putting in other stuff that shouldn't go into Wikipedia.
-- Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith@verizon.net "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print! Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail