Erik Moeller wrote:
On 7/20/06, Elisabeth Bauer elian@djini.de wrote:
One hypothesis: Allowing too much "fancruft" in Wikipedia creates an imbalance in the community structure. There is a really large pool of 15 year old, computer savy kids (some may be older) who get easily attracted to writing wikipedia articles about f.e. star trek compared to a very small pool of for example experts on let's say homer.
What? We have lots of Simpsons articles! ;-)
Homer Simpson as a modern Ulysses would make an interesting essay topic.
An alternative hypothesis: The kind of editors who would avoid Wikipedia because it accepts the work of 15-year-old Star Trek fans might also be likely to run into social problems when arguing about the influence of the Iliad on modern storytelling -- because, in their character and their social interaction, they are simply not used to notions like the search for consensus, or collaboration in WikiLove.
Many of these skills are learned through participation. Traditionally, school systems have told children what to think and how to believe. They learned that God was in His heaven watching what they did ready to throw thunderbolts at bad children. Good and bad were determined by the priests who had a direct phone line to Thor. As society became more secular citizenship and patriotism became the new values. When you told a child to think it was assumed that he would do so on a sound foundation of those values that the society had previously inculcated in him. All this prepared him to be a contributing adult member of the society.
What some of us would now do cost Socrates his life. We want our hypothetical 15-year-old to explore and ask questions. We want him to challenge the theologies that underlay our social structure. If The Simpsons, or Pokémon, or Star Trek are better suited to his explorations than the prevailing Christian, Islamic or Hindu fairy tales that's just fine with me. Indeed posing the questions in such fictional contexts is safer than a direct approach to the prevailing superstitions. Great messages have often been shrouded in fictional drapery.
If our 15-year-olds can freely develop their ideas around topics that are important to them at this stage of life, they will certainly apply those skills at a later stage in life to topics which some of us would call "more important".
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia _built_ by a community, and the encyclopedia can only be successful if the social interactions of the community are healthy. Therefore, expertise cannot be an excuse for aggressive or dismissive behavior. If there is a group of knowledgeable people who cannot exist in the social environment of Wikipedia, then we should provide other means for them to contribute than being a full member of the community -- rather than trying to restructure our content and, by extension, our community to allow them to fit in.
I personally find it amazing and wonderful that so many teenagers wish to contribute to a work of knowledge. That many of them do so in areas of popular culture is hardly surprising, and the environment of Wikipedia is well suited to gradually expose them to new ideas and knowledge.
Exactly, and to accomplish this we must begin by impressing on them that what they believe matters.
Ec