Tony Sidaway wrote:
so much of the best that Wikipedia has to offer comprises mediocrely written articles that tell you pretty much what you need to know, and generally do it in less than a screenful of information and without pointless fripperies such as pictures.
That seems to me a rather limited view of Wikipedia's strengths and potential. You might as well say we're aspiring to nothing more than creating exactly the same stuff you can find on virtually any website on the internet.
--Michael Snow
On 10/3/05, Michael Snow wikipedia@earthlink.net wrote:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
so much of the best that Wikipedia has to offer comprises mediocrely written articles that tell you pretty much what you need to know, and generally do it in less than a screenful of information and without pointless fripperies such as pictures.
That seems to me a rather limited view of Wikipedia's strengths and potential. You might as well say we're aspiring to nothing more than creating exactly the same stuff you can find on virtually any website on the internet.
Absolutely not. We're the best encyclopedia there is. Isn't that enough?
Michael Snow wrote
That seems to me a rather limited view of Wikipedia's strengths and potential. You might as well say we're aspiring to nothing more than creating exactly the same stuff you can find on virtually any website on the internet.
Well, we create stuff that is
(a) in a comprehensible, readable standardised format and neutrally written (b) which uses hypertext intensively rather than randomly to 'footnote' (c) and, very importantly for technical areas, filling in the background on technical terms, not assuming expertise.
If all we did was to present such a sane, pre-chewed version of what already exists on the WWW, it would already be a big deal.
I don't for a moment believe that _is_ all we do, and license into the public domain. For example, on bibliographies of authors, I think WP tends to the systematic generation of lists of works that exists spottily elsewhere. The systematic interwikiness cuts across the language bias of the Web to English.
Charles