Fastfission wrote:
If [[Bill Gates]] and [[Jane Fonda]] were wonderful, featured articles then he could have picked any of the dozens upon dozens of other biographies of major figures who haven't had a full editing treatment from many knowledgeable editors. The "find crappy articles on Wikipedia" game is not one we can ever win -- the person looking for crap will find it.
Yes, but these are not exactly obscure people. If he went and found an article on an obscure 13th century poet which was crap, I would be not quite as bothered. But Jane Fonda? Bill Gates?
These entries could be contentious, heavily edited, prone to vandalism, occassionally biased, etc., and I would be happier than I am right now. What I'm unhappy about is *bad writing*.
When people do that -- okay, there might be a real cause for concern. But if they're looking at articles which just haven't had the benefit of a swirl of interested and informed attention -- well, that's always going to be the majority of the encyclopedia in the way things are done here. There's no point in which the numbers on that will ever really change. Wikipedia is not going to ever be valued for its "completeness" or its "coherency" -- it will be valued for its intellectual property model, its breadth, its concept, its speed, and, in the end, some aspect of its "usefulness", which is a moving target.
Well, I don't agree. It is my intention that we be valued for completeness and coherency and "brilliant prose" *as well as* for being freely licensed, with magnificent breadth and speed and usefulness, etc.
--Jimbo