2008/9/18 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2008/sep/18/wikiped...
Culture clash. "Art is not science. That is, the "facts" about art don't take you very far." we are not interested in taking people anywhere we are interested in informing them.
"What I mean to say is, any decent art reference book, however serious, will offer an argument to explain why it is imparting facts about Goya."
Wikipedia on the other hand take the view that the person chose to read the article and we can safely assume they have their reasons for doing so. We do not judge between someone trying to increase their cultural understanding and a school pupil looking to throw together an essay.
Wikipedia articles are aiming to tell you about the subject not provide a narrative. Most of the ah flair in the english language exists to argue points and often to paper over a lack of actually facts. Wikipedia is meant to reject both of these approaches.
Wikipedia does not lead you on a winding trail where you pick flowers of information along the way. Wikipedia instead takes information concentrates it and fires it at you at high speed. What happens to you afterwards is not really our concern.
On top of that wikipedia prose has to be constructed in a way that is robust enough that it can withstand further information being inserted just about anywhere which reduces the amount of use beautiful but delicate prose you are likely to see.
Wikipedia takes this further with infoboxes.
So does wikipedia writing tend to be rather flat compared to other sources? yes. Is this really a problem? no.