[WikiEN-l] Re: a valid criticism

[Michael Snow]

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>But the two examples he puts forward are, quite frankly, a horrific
>embarassment.  [[Bill Gates]] and [[Jane Fonda]] are nearly unreadable crap.
>
>Why?  What can we do about it?
>  
>
This is a common problem we have, especially with biographies of living 
people. They tend to develop by people adding various facts piecemeal, 
without any attempt to think about how to organize an encyclopedia 
article about the subject. At most they manage to accomplish a rough 
chronological sequence, heavily weighted to recent events of course. 
Unless somebody comes along to synthesize the material, it will remain 
incoherent. So the solution, it would seem, is to encourage editors to 
tackle an article in its entirety, or find more people willing to do so. 
This is one reason the featured article process is so important, because 
it's really this kind of treatment that is the key to featured status.

Biographies generally are also very vulnerable to a form of POV-pushing 
I call death-by-anecdote, and both of the examples Carr picked suffer 
from it. The rambling recitation of chronological facts encourages 
people to add all manner of trivial incidents, ephemeral news that does 
not contribute to any greater understanding of the subject. Often 
editors will key on mentioning every inconsequential matter they can 
find to put the subject in a negative light (or alternatively to engage 
in hagiography). Attempts to "NPOV" this produce a back and forth in 
which the discussion of some trifle grows out of all proportion to its 
significance.

--Michael Snow