From: Delirium on Wednesday, December 17, 2003 4:17
PM
Jimmy Wales wrote:
I agree with all of this, including where you
place the blame on me.
:-) This is an eloquent expression of what I set out to say in this
thread, that I think that this issue can in large part be resolved by
some "how". Right now, the only "how" that people can think of is to
simply delete things that wouldn't belong in print, and this is
causing some friction here and there.
I suppose I'm skeptical that this is a big part of it. I personally
tend to suggest deletion of stuff primarily based on a viewpoint that
it
doesn't belong in an online encyclopedia, not that
it doesn't belong
in
print. Sure, more stuff belongs in an online
encyclopedia, but I
don't
think *everything* does. Believe me, if I was basing
it on print
considerations, I'd be nominating thousands of pages for VfD. =]
The whole question boils down to how people develop their personal
viewpoint of what belongs in an online encyclopedia.
Everyone to some degree, reasonably, forms that viewpoint based on
analogy to a print encyclopedia.
And I think the reasonable points of lessons to draw from paper
encyclopedias are in the standards of scholarship, tone, and
readability. These are lessons that are independent of media.
They also give a good sense of what was historically considered
important.
But it is not a good idea to draw too many lessons from the depth and
breadth of coverage and the structure of paper encyclopedias. These are
areas which are shaped by the constraints and strengths of the
particular medium of paper.
--tc