I was describing to someone how Wikipedia works:
"anyone can edit" etc.
He answered with this argument:
"Wikipedia is the triumph of the average person!
of the man in the street!)"
(average meaning: not good, not bad, just OK)
I asked "why?"
His explanation:
"Great brilliant works are built by individuals.
Groups of people can only create average works.
If someone writes something good in the wiki,
other average persons will intervene with his/her
work and turn it into an average work. If someone
writes something bad in the wiki, the others will
again turn it into something of average value.
with your system (meaning: Wikipedia's system)
you can be sure that you will never create
something too bad but also never something too
good. You can create only average articles."
The idea behind his argument was that Wikipedia
will be a good resource as long as it attracts
good cotnributors. but it will soon become an
average site/encyclopaedia because it allows
anyone to join the project and edit, and most
people are just average persons and not brilliant
writers.
Do you think it's true? and how can we answer
this argument?
--Optim
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On Sunday 28 July 2002 03:00 am, The Cunctator wrote:
> What are the articles this person has been changing?
For 66.108.155.126:
20:08 Jul 27, 2002 Computer
20:07 Jul 27, 2002 Exploit
20:07 Jul 27, 2002 AOL
20:05 Jul 27, 2002 Hacker
20:05 Jul 27, 2002 Leet
20:03 Jul 27, 2002 Root
20:02 Jul 27, 2002 Hacker
19:59 Jul 27, 2002 Hacker
19:58 Jul 27, 2002 Hacker
19:54 Jul 27, 2002 Principle of least astonishment
19:54 Jul 27, 2002 Hacker
19:52 Jul 27, 2002 Trance music
19:51 Jul 27, 2002 Trance music
For 208.24.115.6:
20:20 Jul 27, 2002 Hacker
For 141.157.232.26:
20:19 Jul 27, 2002 Hacker
Most of these were complete replacements with discoherent statements.
Such as "TAP IS THE ABSOLUTE DEFINITION OF THE NOUN HACKER" for Hacker.
For the specifics follow http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Special:Ipblocklist
and look at the contribs.
--mav
This debate is relevant to us, because we have been discussing lit fests,
the profile of writers being invited/privileged etc... Not only on the
basis of content, but also on the basis of age, looks, etc [
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/mar/28/books.booksnews]
Sometime in 2013, I started a Wikipedia page on *Goa Today*. As everyone
reading this knows, this is Goa's oldest monthly, started way back in the
1960s, and has played an influential role in the literary life of the
State. The discussions earlier today between Ben and Peter Nazareth only
underline this point. And this is truth both when it was owned by Lambert
Mascarenhas (jointly, if not mistaken, with Printwell owner FD Dantas, the
father of our late much-respected journo colleague Norman Dantas; and
ex-Speaker Machado) and also when owned by the Salgaocars.
As most would know, *Goa Today *has a significant expat audience, but
hasn't been very active with its own web presence online. The logic
probably being that if they had a website, people would prefer to read
their magazine online and not subscribe to it. I know of a number of expats
who subscribe to the monthly and read it eagerly each month.
What happens is that its lack of online visibility today gets translated
(almost) into non-notability:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Goa_Today
See the debate above, which is telling! I've earlier disagreed with
Wikipedians and pointed out that as long as their definition of notability
is based on someone's (or some institution's) web presence, in English...
this is going to be an unfair world for perhaps the majority on the planet!
FN
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