On 11/8/03 6:17 PM, "Alex Rosen" arosen@novell.com wrote:
Watch it - you've just said that me, Jimbo, and a lot of other people don't take Wikipedia seriously as an encyclopedia. That's not true, and I think you know it. Here are some other reasons that people have for their anti-deletionism stance, other than they don't "take the idea that wikipedia as an encyclopedia seriously":
- They think that an Internet encyclopedia can and should cover much
more ground as compared to a paper encyclopedia, so more things should be included. It's a legitimate argument - what would Funk & Wagnalls include if it didn't have any space constraints?
Moreover, I believe that Wikipedia should not ascribe to use dead-tree encyclopedias as models for its content and shape, just as it was a mistake to model early automobiles after horse-buggies. We need to move past the metaphor and recognize that a paper encyclopedia is not an encyclopedia in the true sense of being a universal reference.
Wikipedia has the potential to be a universal reference; a paper encyclopedia does not. They are different beasts which share a heritage.
- The job of the current Wikipedia is not to be a perfect encyclopedia,
but to be a source for the great "1.0" version. That version will weed out everything that doesn't belong in an encyclopedia.
I find this argument disturbing and wrong. I certainly hope this is not the consensus understanding of the role of Wikipedia. Have I missed some official position statements?
<snip>
The second half of your argument, about the scribblebox, is just hyperbole of course. Nobody is arguing for that. Everyone wants to delete pure rubbish. It's the stuff that's not rubbish, but also not "notable" or "important", that's we're really arguing about.
Absolutely.