Marek makes some great points. I couldn't agree with him more.
If anyone convinces Wikipedia that it needs to be "more like the real thing" (whatever that is, including mainstream, printed encyclopedias or Encarta), it would be a great loss for the attempt to build alternatives. Likewise, it would be hardly helpful if anyone convinces Wikipedia that it should focus on the "standard and quality information" argument (whatever that is supposed to mean!) over all other strengths of the Wikipedia experiment.
For someone like me, the strength of the Wikipedia lies mainly in the fact that it has space also for my village of 8000 to be written about for a global audience (in a factual manner, of course). If things that are important to me are going to be seen as "peripheral" (just because they lack size or not being visible enough in cyberspace), then in what way is it different from the mainstream... that has kept me out in the cold for so long, anyway?
Just the other day, a speaker here in Goa, India was describing "remote" communities, and pointing out that the term is misleading in itself. As he put it, the logic of "remoteness" is always connected to our definition of what is the centre (of the world, of the nation state, or whatever). "For people out there, their own location, of course, is the centre of the world, as far as they go," he said.
Can we encourage the diversity of the planet to flower in the Wikipedia, as it really should? --Frederick "FN" Noronha, Independent Journalist, Goa, India.
On 10/01/07, Marek Najmajer marqoz@wp.pl wrote:
I've been reading some of your meassages or votes for entry deletion, and I'm getting more and more sad.
You are trying to have a 'clean' worthfull encyclopaedia with assurance there is no meaningless article in it. It could be understood in case of written, printed book which looks great in the bookshelf (I like books anyway)....