On 12 April 2012 21:24, James Heilman <jmh649(a)gmail.com> wrote:
With respect to audience, on Wikipedia we write for a
general audience yet
our medical content is still used by 50-70% of practicing physicians.
Lonely planet lists hotels in different section based on price. On
Wikipedia we use editorial judgement about what to include and what not to
include. We have subjective policies like [[WP:DUE]]. Just because
something is subjective does not mean it cannot be done. There are books
like the 1000 must see places before you die.
http://www.1000beforeyoudie.com/ Referencing of this content is possible.
It is one of the most pernicious myths in Wikimedia-land that we
aren't riddled with subjective standards.
1. As an English Wikinews reviewer, I make decisions as to the
importance and newsworthiness of what goes on the homepage every time
I publish a story. Is the latest development in the Trayvon Martin
case more or less important than Facebook buying Instagram? On what
basis do I make such a decision? Oh yeah, "newsworthiness". That well
known, objective measure! ;-)
2. On Commons, there is a category called "Suggestive use of
feathers". Is there some sort of Platonic measure of how one uses
feathers suggestively? Same for "Erotic pole dancing". Am I to believe
that Commons editors are deciding on some purely objective basis
whether pole dancing images are erotic or not? (I pick on the
erotic/suggestive categories solely because of the BLP-esque issues
Commons often raises and fails to adequately deal with.)
Subjective decisions happen all the time on the projects. There's a
reason why we generally prefer our admins to be made of flesh and
blood rather than just building hyper-intelligent AIs to run the
projects.
--
Tom Morris
<http://tommorris.org/>