I just had dinner with [[Scott McCloud]], and, unsurprisingly, the conversation turned to webcomics, and, eventually, to Wikipedia's treatment of them. (This was partially spurred by the Kristopher Straub debacle, about which I will say only that it demonstrates the degree to which the bias is overwhelmingly towards deletion across many areas of Wikipedia right now) McCloud is somebody who knows comics. He quite literally wrote the book on them. In the course of the conversation it became clear that he was pretty well completely fed up with Wikipedia. And it should be noted, this comes from someone who has been on the forefront of digital technology debates several times. He makes clear his admiration for the concept of Wikipedia. He makes clear his admiration for how Wikipedia got started. His problem is with how it works now. The problem he has? Notability. Specifically the arbitrary and capricious way in which AfD targets things, questions their notability, and uses guidelines that make no sense from the outside. See also Timothy Noah's recent article on Slate for this - it gives a good view of how notability guidelines look to the outside. In this case, it's how they look to the subject of the article, but I assure you - they look similar to people who are familiar with the subject. In short, they appear a Kafka-esque absurdity. This is a new problem - these are major figures who are sympathetic to Wikipedia but fed up with its operation. And I can tell you, the tone among people I talk to in that real life thing I maintain is pretty similar - great respect for Wikipedia as a concept, reasonable respect for Wikipedia as a resource, no respect for Wikipedia as something anyone would ever want to edit. The actual editorial process of Wikipedia is rightly viewed as a nightmare. Hell, I view it as a nightmare at this point - I've given up editing it because the rules seem to have been written, at this point, with the intention of writing a very bad encyclopedia. Our efforts to ensure reliability have come at the cost of a great deal of respect - and respect from people we should have respect from. We are losing smart, well-educated people who are sympathetic to Wikipedia's basic principles. That is a disaster. And it's a disaster that can be laid squarely at the feet of the grotesque axis of [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:N]] - two pages that are eating Wikipedia alive from the inside out. (And I don't mean this in terms of community. I mean that they are systematically being used to turn good articles into crap, and have yet to demonstrate their actual use in turning bad articles into good ones.) Best, Phil Sandifer sandifer(a)english.ufl.edu You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.