r of reasons:<BR> <BR> 1. It promotes elitism, by tending to say that some articles are more equal=20= than others.<BR> <BR> 2. Wikipedia is, by nature, a work in progress. Every article can be changed= , developed,&nbsp; reassessed, and rewritten. The Sifter idea creates an ill= usion of finality about particular articles--they are "good enough," so to s= peak. <BR> <BR> 3. Most articles will be ignored. We are now close to 150 thousand articles=20= on Wikipedia. I doubt anyone has read them all, and some have been long forg= otten. In many cases this is because they deal with some arcane subject matt= er that doesn' t really foster mass interest or debate (more often debate).=20= As the intro to the BP page itself states: "we couldn't possibly keep track=20= of all of the brilliant prose here!" In other words, more potential Brillian= t Prose candidates will be left out than will be added. <BR> <BR> 4. It can promote factionalism. Some people might have an inordinate number=20= of articles in BP, so that when they write new articles, their supporters (a= nd yes, there are people here who think that every word typed in by some of=20= their Wiki-colleagues is divinely inspired) will immediately nominate it for= BP. Once the flame wars die down, it will be there and it will be even more= difficult to eliminate POV and other issues--after all, it is "brilliant pr= ose," isn't it?<BR> <BR> 5. There is so much left to be done yet. Maybe at a later date we can consid= er this, but right now there are countless stubs, even more articles taken d= irectly from EB, and entire areas that are not covered. As an extreme exampl= e, if we rise above the debate over America-centric vs. Euro-centric article= s, we will see how little there really is about Africa. Maybe we should be f= illing in the gaps first, before we start patting ourselves on the back abou= t how smart we are.<BR> <BR> 6. Who are these so-called experts who will qualify material? From what I've= seen so far, being an academic expert in a particular field hardly protects= one from edit wars--Julie and 172 are two primary examples of this. Meanwhi= le, the only qualification I have seen so far is that they have a B.A. Gimme= a friggin' break! (and before I get accused of academic elitism, I make it=20= known that I dropped out of college and spend an inordinate amount of time a= t work correcting the BS from the BAs, MAs, and PhDs).<BR> <BR> 7. Maybe the question isn't so much "why shouldn't we?" but "why should we?"= Especially at this particular stage.<BR> <BR> Okay, I've had my say. Flame away.<BR> <BR> Danny<BR> </FONT></HTML> --part1_1cc.e6ddf26.2c559262_boundary--