Re: [Wikipedia-l] Do we need templates ?

From: "Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz" <kpjas(a)promail.pl> One of the reasons that Wikipedia *works*--why it is developing so quickly and is so attractive to contributors (compelling, one might say...) is that anyone can come in and contribute in practically any fashion. Instigating templates has a number of implications for how we might begin to think of Wikipedia: it would become a collection of standardized information rather than a collection of information that people just happen to feel inspired to input. Who is interested in inputting "standardized information"? Maybe some people, but surely not nearly as many as those who are interested in inputting whatever information they know. Suppose we were to require (somehow) that everyone writing about the countries of the world input the information in exactly the format of the CIA Factbook. Who, honestly, would *want* to do that? And on the other hand, who would want to contribute a lot of generally accurate, useful information that will eventually add up to weighty, detailed articles, not necessarily all in the same format? Academia is sometimes compared to the marketplace of ideas. That's also an apt description of Wikipedia at present: it's unregulated (except for some basic ground rules), and anyone can come in and "set up shop" (write an article), but other "business owners" (contributors) can "compete" (improve the article) according to their understanding of what the facts are, what the best way to express them is, etc. Competition improves articles. Regulation tends to stifle free competition. Eventually, I suspect, we're going to have huge amounts of information, and it will be possible for people to go in and render related entries in a similar format. It's generally better to impose order *after* creation, in a way that reflects the natural categories of things as information is given. That's how good researchers work, by the way. They observe the data, or read the literature, very broadly and in-depth, letting it "speak for itself" as much as possible, and without trying to impose theories on the facts before all the available facts are in. In a similar way, in a constantly-growing, constantly-improving encyclopedia, why not just let people add whatever information they want, and when it's reached a certain level of maturity, only then start imposing some uniformity on the way similar information is presented? All this being said, there's nothing stopping you from proposing on the wiki some templates that you would like others to follow (without presenting them as "The Wikipedia Format for X-type Articles"), and maybe Wikipedia will be better for it. That's my way of thinking at present, though my mind could certainly be changed. Larry