[WikiEN-l] a valid criticism

[Sean Barrett]

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Kat Walsh stated for the record:

> On 10/7/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> 
>>Maybe I do have surprising expectations, but I do think that even 7 year
>>olds are more interested in "Puppy" rather than "Dog" say. Big articles
>>are just stopping off points for whatever you are really trying to find,
>>the article about the particularly cute kind of puppy that just ran
>>past.
> 
> I disagree on this, and I wonder why so many people state it: a good
> encyclopedic article on a broad subject I am only casually acquainted
> with is very useful, and in fact Wikipedia is often the first place
> I'll turn. 

It is often stated because it is far easier to write a specialized
article than a general one, primarily because the specialized article
can make assumptions about a reader's knowledge that a general one
cannot.  Personally, I find it much more enjoyable to dig into old
Soviet naval records and write about incidents involving their warships
than fix the mess that is [[Submarine]] (and we should be ashamed that
it was a featured article; it is a mess with numerous factual errors).
Trying to clearly explain what is wrong with the statement 'Submarines
designed for the purpose of attacking merchant ships or other warships
are known as "fast attacks", "hunter-killers", "fast boats", or "fleet
submarines"' (hint: three very different types of boats are listed) --
and then preserve that explanation against the hordes of editors whose
knowledge of submarines consists of having seen ''Crimson Tide'' three
times -- is exhausting and ultimately futile.  The mediocre always win,
simply by force of numbers.  It's much more fun to dig into what exactly
happened to [[Soviet submarine S-117]] -- the only people who dare to
disagree with you are knowledgeable enough to make the disagreement fun!

Nonetheless, we need a good article on [[submarine]]s, and when the
existing article's corruption once again becomes intolerable, I will
once again push it back toward correctness and readability, so that it
can start down its slide again.  The worst thing we could do is decide
that we don't need to work on the general articles because we think no
one will ever want to learn about [[submarine]]s -- that they'll only
use it as an index pointing to [[MARF reactor]].

</rant>

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Never stand next to anyone throwing
 sean at epoptic.com | shit at an armed man. --Larry Niven
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