Wikipedia is in the process of becoming a household name. I am confident that in a year's time it will be a name that is as well known as or better than Britannica and Encarta.
I think it would be too bad if we cause confusion by introducing a new name for a printed edition. Image Britannica had called their online version "Amerannica", what a waste PR wise.
In my view people will be less confused when online and printed Wikipedia differ in content under the same name. Online Brittanica is also different from printed edition, because of regular updates of the online version.
Erik Zachte
.
From: Erik Zachte on Wednesday, December 17, 2003 4:40 PM
Wikipedia is in the process of becoming a household name. I am confident that in a year's time it will be a name that is as well
known as or
better than Britannica and Encarta.
I think it would be too bad if we cause confusion by introducing a new
name for a
printed edition. Imagine Britannica had called their online version
"Amerannica",
what a waste PR wise.
PR should be a concern, but it should hardly be our first concern.
My opinion on the particular namings of things is somewhat formless.
All /I/ know is that I believe I have identified a trend of people editing entries with an eye towards the print version, leading to (imho) astoundingly long and digressive entries which try to fit all the possibly relevant information on one page, with subtopics being redirected into the omnibus--and to dislike the necessary and important process of budding off detail into distinct entries.
Furthermore, I think that the combination of the natural inclination to use the inclusionary criteria valid for paper encyclopedias (without fully understanding the reasons for those criteria) and the inclination among some to edit towards a print version of Wikipedia lead people to overemphasize deletion as a tool.
It certainly may be the case that the promotion of "Wikipedia 1.0" has nothing to do with this behavior, but unless I am mistaken there is a pretty good overlap between those who are excited about and actively pushing to have the "certification" process and paper version be part of the Wikipedia project and those who actively delete pages and build long, hierarchical entries and resist the creation of more specific topics.
I could certainly be mistaken.
--tc
Cunc-
All /I/ know is that I believe I have identified a trend of people editing entries with an eye towards the print version, leading to (imho) astoundingly long and digressive entries which try to fit all the possibly relevant information on one page
Now, now. These are completely different phenomena, and correlation, if it exists, does not equal causation. What you describe is also not "deletionism", as the only thing that is deleted, if anything, is structure in the database. It is arguable whether page titles (not page content) like "Response of the Catholic Church to allegations of child sexual abuse" should really be kept. Normally they are simply redirected.
I oppose splitting articles up into tiny chunks for a number of reasons which I have already given to you. Quoting myself:
- - -
I feel that it is extremely tedious to have to click around many times and load many pages to get a complete picture of an issue, a person etc. This is even more applicable for printing, of course, but also a general problem. I think an article should have as much information related to its title as possible for that reason, and things should only be split off if a certain maximum size is reached (I tend towards 30-40K), or if they are not really related.
[...]
I implemented section editing to make it easier to handle long articles. We will also address the edit conflict issue soon. In terms of linking, would you be happier with long articles if redirects could point to anchors? Then History of sports could redirect to Sports#History. I fail to see which other advantages might be gained from having many small articles on a subject instead of one reasonably large one.
- - -
Yes, it has something to do with printing also, but not the 1.0 print edition, but printing articles from Wikipedia, whether they are part of 1.0 or not. This is an important application for any article, and splitting things up makes it more difficult.
Regards,
Erik
I agree with this. It'd take a pretty major revolution for me to get too excited about any other name.
Erik Zachte wrote:
Wikipedia is in the process of becoming a household name. I am confident that in a year's time it will be a name that is as well known as or better than Britannica and Encarta.
I think it would be too bad if we cause confusion by introducing a new name for a printed edition. Image Britannica had called their online version "Amerannica", what a waste PR wise.
In my view people will be less confused when online and printed Wikipedia differ in content under the same name. Online Brittanica is also different from printed edition, because of regular updates of the online version.
Erik Zachte
.
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