On Jun 4, 2004, at 8:47 PM, Evan Prodromou wrote:
"J" == Jared redjar@redjar.org writes:
J> This thread seems to have gotten stuck on what is appropriate J> and what isn't appropriate for Wikipedia content. There is _no J> way_ everyone will ever agree on that and it seems sort of a J> pointless argument.It's not an equivalent question at all. "What are our goals?" "What are we making?" "What belongs?" and "What doesn't?" are pretty logical and reasonable questions to ask for the creation of any body of text.
It seems that the question being discussed in this thread was not quite what you've listed, but rather, "Where do we draw the line?"... followed by a dozen, "well I think it should be drawn here." The questions above are exactly what I was advocating. Except, I suggest before we determine, "What belongs?" we figure out _why_ something should belong or not. I haven't seen any evidence that an article containing the biography of Joe Nobody either discourages or encourages participation.
If the answers were, "We have no goals, and anything goes," we'd have a real shitty encyclopedia. We _do_ have goals, however, and some pretty consistent standards of what belongs.
I've read lots of people's opinion that the town entries don't belong. But their existence is what got me and many others involved with Wikipedia. So before something is determined to not belong, I think there should be solid reasoning why it would be harmful to the project. This is not a print encyclopedia that has space constraints and publishing deadlines. The traditional definition of encyclopedia does not work for Wikipedia.
I know it may seem like we'll never agree, but we _have_, in a lot of cases. These things have been decided over the course of this project. We don't include original research, we don't do biographies for non-famous people. We don't have dictionary definitions or copies of public-domain text. We don't have opinion pieces or soapbox rhetoric.
J> We might as well try to determine "what is art?".Not equivalent at all. It's not a semantic distinction about a single word, but a question of the content of an encyclopedic work.
I'm pretty sure that in the previous paragraphs you are saying we should come up with clearer definitions what should be included. You are telling me that using _words_ to _define_ what belongs in Wikipedia is not a semantic distinction? :)
-jared