On Tuesday 28 May 2002 05:02 pm, Lee wrote:

One possible downside is that many of them might become orphans, making database maintenance harder, because even if we allow such articles, we should not necessarily allow links to them from relevant articles.

I can think of another downside - new contributors and visitors become increasingly clueless as to what the project is about and the difference between personal posts about their friends and family and actual encyclopedia content. That is, unless we somehow hide the "non-qualified" articles from search engines or visitors to the site -- but then what use would they be?

Who is going to be the one to tell new contributors <not> to do things the natural wiki way and link their personal biographies to other pages? New contributors generally don't read our policy pages before contributing and it is already a struggle to get them to up-to speed on naming conventions and NPOV -- let alone having to explain the difference between the two incompatible, yet, side-by-side types of articles. What is described is another project altogether (Wikicities anyone?).

For example: Under this setup, if I were a new contributor and just wrote a bio on myself after seeing many other personal bios in RecentChanges, It would seem pretty logical for me to place [[Daniel Lee Mayer]] on [[1975]] (my birthyear) and on [[December 31]] (my birthday). It would also seem natural to add my name to [[Biologists]] since I have a degree in biology.....

Minden' the shop is difficult enough as it is. I for one don't want to have to constantly check to make sure links actually link to encyclopedia content and not personal bios. But then, that's just me.

Cheers!

--maveric149