[Foundation-l] Wikipedia is not the Karma Sutra, was Re: commons and freely licensed sexual imagery

[Michael Peel]

On 15 May 2009, at 08:36, Nikola Smolenski wrote:

> Michael Peel wrote:
>> On 15 May 2009, at 08:01, Nikola Smolenski wrote:
>>
>>> Perhaps this is off-topic, but I wanted to say it for a long  
>>> time. The
>>> more time passes, the more I wonder if people who work on Wikipedia
>>> have
>>> ever seen an encyclopedia. On Wikipedia, dictionary definitions and
>>> image galleries are forbidden, and stubs are frowned upon. Yet every
>>> encyclopedia I have ever seen has dictionary definitions, and image
>>> galleries, and stubs-a-plenty.
>>>
>>> I guess that conclusion is that we are doing something wrong.
>>
>> They're not forbidden: they're just in a different location
>> (Wiktionary and Commons).
>
> Wiktionary has dictionary definitions, but they can't be expanded to
> cover what encyclopedic aspects of the topic could be covered.
>
> Commons has image galleries, but it does not have encyclopedic image
> galleries. Commons galleries feature images based on their aesthetic
> value, but do not offer encyclopedic information about the topic that
> should be presented by the images.

In cases where there is encyclopaedic benefit and/or aspects to  
having definitions and/or image galleries, then I'd expect WP:IAR to  
be applied. In the vast number of cases, though, I'd be very  
surprised if this was the case - e.g. nearly every single image  
gallery I've seen on Wikipedia has been for the benefit of showing  
off the authors' photography skills. ;-)

(BTW, I've seen image galleries used at least semi-encyclopaedically,  
e.g. at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 
Solar_eclipse_of_August_1,_2008 , although perhaps someone will  
decide to remove them after this email...)

>> Could you clarify what you mean by "stubs are frowned upon"? The only
>> reason I can think of for that is that it would be better if they
>> were developed into better articles rather than left as stubs...
>
> People dislike stubs. Sometimes, stubs get deleted because they  
> have too
> little information, even while they are about a valid topic.  
> Sometimes,
> stubs get merged into larger articles with suspicious choice of topic.
> Sometimes, stubs get converted into redirects to articles on similar
> topics, where information contained in the stubs is eventually  
> lost. All
> of this is done in cases where a traditional encyclopedia would  
> have stubs.

All I can say to that is that it's a great pity if that happens...

Mike