[WikiEN-l] "Wikipedic"

[Daniel P.B.Smith]

[snippages]
> the original poster was adding off-the-cuff pizza places that, at 
> least as far as was indicated in the article, had no particular 
> significance except possibly to the poster.
> RickK
>
> "John C. Penta" <pentaj2 at UofS.edu> wrote:
>
> I think the whole idea of 'encyclopedic'-ness is becoming a barrier to 
> Wikipedia.
>
> I have to agree with Erik; include these places. For those who know 
> the Jersey Shore, imagine an article on the area _without_ including 
> something on the Stone Pony. I live here...Not including the Stone 
> Pony would leave a gaping hole. Not including the Hilltop Steakhouse 
> in a similar article on Boston would be similar.
>
> Yeah, you'd get all the facts, but you'd miss a lot of the character.

I plead guilty to personal inconsistency on this. ("I am large, I 
contain multitudes...") I thought RickK was right about the inclusion 
of Sally's Apizza and Pepe's Pizza. On the other hand, some time ago 
Angela slapped me _very, very_ gently on the wrist for mentioning by 
name all two of the lodging options available in Lancaster, Wisconsin 
(population 4070); the specific sentence was "Lancaster accommodations 
include the Best Western Welcome Inn (608-723-4162) and the lovely 
Maple-Harris Bed and Breakfast 608-723-4717, 888-216-0888." Well, the 
Best Western is fine, but the Maple-Harris _is_ lovely. (Anyway, we 
settled for replacing the sentence with external links to the lodging 
sections of the City of Lancaster website)

Clearly, certain kinds of articles, particularly those about towns and 
universities (and university towns!) tend to acquire a certain 
"community" flavor. Obviously this is because the people most likely to 
contribute are present/former residents/students, who have an emotional 
attachment to the place. Equally obviously, the mention of specific 
commercial establishments is apt to be perceived as "advertising" by 
outsiders, whereas in many cases the motivation for placement is just 
affection for the establishment. I certainly do not have any business 
connection with Maple-Harris, for example.

Of course, the problem is that merely mentioning an establishment may 
be evocative of local color to people that know the town, but doesn't 
do much for outsiders. It's true that I'm not a proper judge of whether 
Sally's Apizza is "encyclopedic" or not. But unfortunately it's equally 
true that mentioning it in an article on New Haven doesn't do a thing 
to convey anything about New Haven to me.

So... what we probably have here in the New Haven article is people 
from New Haven writing things about New Haven that are mostly to be 
appreciated by people _from_ New Haven. Which is probably why this sort 
of thing is faintly annoying to outsiders.

(By the way, for the record, the current article on Boston does _not_ 
mention the Hilltop Steakhouse. Nor Jake Wirth's, nor the Union Oyster 
House, nor Durgin-Park, nor the much-missed Jack and Marion's in 
Brookline, home of the Empire State Skyscraper Sandwich... Ah, Jack and 
Marion's... What care I about lunch counters and pizza joints in New 
Haven,  Jack and Marion's was a cultural icon of the first water. Say, 
get this--their menu, well, see, it had these red stars next to certain 
items and when you tried to figure out what it meant and looked at the 
bottom of the menu, it said "Red star indicates good profit item for 
Jack and Marion's--please order!" Yes, indeed, Jack and Marion's is 
surely worthy of an entire Wikipedia article of its own, perhaps two... 
but I digress. Or do I?)

I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this, but clearly Wikipedia is 
no more (and no less) like a print encyclopedia than email is like 
traditional ink-on-dead-tree-USPS "snail mail."

I'm beginning to wonder whether we should recognize a division between 
"high encyclopedic" (as in Diderot, Britannica, etc.) and "low 
encyclopedic" (as in "Encyclopedia of Beer," "Ohio State Football 
Encyclopedia," "The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Science Fiction"). 
Certainly there seem to be things which are not "encyclopedic" but 
which are nevertheless "wikipedic."


--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net alternate: 
dpbsmith at alum.mit.edu
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
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