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

[Sean Black]

> Message: 4
> Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 13:18:27 +0200
> From: "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Does openness dull the bleeding edge?
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> 	<b8ceeef70608310418q56ec67c1v54823a49f0f6bf59 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> On 8/31/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > How would you feel about adding beautiful and insightful prose to an
> > article on a university, only to find that someone has later added:
> > "In a 1999 episode ("Lovers' Walk," Season 3, Episode 8) of Buffy the
> > Vampire Slayer, Joyce (Buffy's mother) says to Buffy, "[[Carnegie
> > Mellon]]has a wonderful design curriculum.""
> >
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Carnegie_Mellon_University&oldid=42368976#Carnegie_Mellon_in_fiction]
> > ... Delighted, no doubt!
>
> The solution isn't bad though:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Mellon_University_in_popular_culture

Actually, I'd say that's worse, because it enforces the idea that all
references to fiction in an article on a "real" topic are on equal
footing and of equal importance, which simply isn't true.

Despite the poor quality and excess that many of these sections suffer
from, it /is/ possible to write a good section about a subject's
coverage and appearances in fiction. It just isn't done the way it
should be often enough.


~~Sean