From: Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia
No they are written with the objective of avoiding an extremely bad encyclopedia.
Strange. Because we were doing a fine job of writing a good encyclopedia before we had them, so I'm not exactly sure what we accomplished there.
Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia yet. It was _certainly_ not an encyclopedia _then._ I've always assumed that calling it "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" was a deliberate attempt to keep the _goal_ clear and always in front of everyone.
Various articles with fridge fanatics would be an example.
I must be remembering the two years I spent editing Wikipedia before [[WP:N]] and [[WP:RS]] were codified wrong, because I'm pretty sure we were capable of dealing with such groups before we had them.
Sounds like the classic dispute between the entrepreneurs and innovators who start things and the more pedestrian, less imaginative types that make them work and maintain them.
Things change.
It's not like it was back then. When a dollar was a dollar. And the girls were prettier. And we had _real_ music then, wonderful music, not this modern stuff, noise, it's just noise, I tell you.
Ya can talk, ya can talk, ya can bicker, ya can talk, ya can bicker, bicker, bicker, ya can talk, ya can talk, ya can talk, talk, talk, talk, bicker, bicker, bicker, ya can talk all ya wanna but it's differnt than it was.
On Feb 24, 2007, at 9:07 PM, Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia yet. It was _certainly_ not an encyclopedia _then._ I've always assumed that calling it "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" was a deliberate attempt to keep the _goal_ clear and always in front of everyone.
Bull. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. It's not a publishable one, for a variety of reasons, quality only being one. But it's clearly an encyclopedia.
Things change.
Yes. But I've seen nobody provide any evidence that there was a rash of crazies we couldn't deal with leading to the implementation of [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:N]]. Or that there was a sudden decrease in crazies when we had them. Or, really, any correlation between the two, little yet causality.
-Phil
Phil Sandifer Snowspinner@gmail.com writes:
On Feb 24, 2007, at 9:07 PM, Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
Wikipedia is not an encyclopedia yet. It was _certainly_ not an encyclopedia _then._ I've always assumed that calling it "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" was a deliberate attempt to keep the _goal_ clear and always in front of everyone.
Bull. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. It's not a publishable one, for a variety of reasons, quality only being one. But it's clearly an encyclopedia.
Things change.
Yes. But I've seen nobody provide any evidence that there was a rash of crazies we couldn't deal with leading to the implementation of [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:N]]. Or that there was a sudden decrease in crazies when we had them. Or, really, any correlation between the two, little yet causality.
-Phil
All that happened was that the Seigenthaler mess scarred the tender flesh of the collective minds of the community. I suspect it affected us long-term by providing a paradigmatic case for criticism and poisoning the waters of fresh recruits. I remember noticing definite differences in policy discussions and just general discussions on Talk pages bare weeks and months after the USA Today editorial hit.
On Saturday 24 February 2007 20:07, Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
Ya can talk, ya can talk, ya can bicker, ya can talk, ya can bicker, bicker, bicker, ya can talk, ya can talk, ya can talk, talk, talk, talk, bicker, bicker, bicker, ya can talk all ya wanna but it's differnt than it was.
Whaddyatalk, whaddyatalk, whaddyatalk? Whydayabicker?
Well, it's the Model T Ford that made the cracker barrel Obsolete, obsolete, obsolete The cracker barrel just sorta Went out the window Five, ten, fifteen Twenty miles to the County seat, county seat, county seat Who's gonna patronize a little bitty Two-by-four kinda store anymore?