[WikiEN-l] Does openness dull the bleeding edge?

[Erik Moeller]

On 8/31/06, niht-hræfn <nihthraefn at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Aug 31, 2006, at 4:17, Erik Moeller wrote:
> > I don't think Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia that connects
> > everything to The Simpsons somehow. Do we need a "Wikitrivia" project
> > (or perhaps this idea can be abstracted in a more useful fashion) to
> > collect all the meaningless pop cultural crap, or is existing policy
> > sufficient to remove it?
>
> There's definitely a Simpsons wikia (http://simpsons.wikia.com/ -
> needs a good kick in the pants though), but I'm not sure what the
> community feels about linking to Wikia, etc. As far as I know/knew,
> Wikia is/was sort of meant to be a place for more... specialist...
> "encyclopedias", although it focuses more on communities, etc. It's
> also an entirely different can of worms, and often article quality
> is... less than good. But it's a thought. Maybe.

Well, I don't think the problem is specific to TS. The problem is
largely that once an article gets a bullet point list with random
crap, everyone feels justified to add their own random crap.
(Sometimes the crap also creeps into the main prose, but there it is
easier to remove as such -- trivia sections are tolerated and perhaps
seen by many Wikipedians as charming additions to articles.)

Perhaps the solution is to build a single big RCA (Random Crap
Aggregator) to prevent Wikipedia articles from turning into mini-RCAs.
Each page would essentially be a set of bullet point lists about a
topic where anyone can add their random facts. Some of those might be
Wikipedia-worthy and find their way back into the article.
-- 
Peace & Love,
Erik