On 20/07/06, Elisabeth Bauer elian@djini.de wrote:
One hypothesis: Allowing too much "fancruft" in Wikipedia creates an imbalance in the community structure. There is a really large pool of 15 year old, computer savy kids (some may be older) who get easily attracted to writing wikipedia articles about f.e. star trek compared to a very small pool of for example experts on let's say homer. The latter group won't be as easily drawn into writing for wikipedia than the first. And they will be less and less willing to do so, if they find a community dominated by 15 year old star trek fans.
No group of valid editors and contributors should be treated as any less worthy than any other group. Just because you are young Caucasian techie doesn't mean you're less of an editor than a wizened African. Every single person who wants to contribute should be welcomed with open arms, whether they intend to improve our coverage of Star Trek or the fine nuances of Bose-Einstein condensates at higher temperatures.
Now, I hear you crying out, how do we correct systemic bias if we can't turn young Caucasian techies away and vilify their areas of interest? Surely, the only way to lure in academic experts is to construct a social vacuum, and suck them in that way?
Perhaps not. The current situation is that we are making editorial calls on what popular culture is worthy of an article. I would rather have enough popular culture contributors and articles (note - that's -good- popular culture articles, not bad ones) to be able to say "yes, that's too obscure, trans-delemerge it," than to be begging for contributors in this field.
Now, the question is, how do we make Wikipedia just as attractive for other demographic groups, so that we can also be saying "that nuance of Bose-Einstein condensate is too obscure, trans-delemerge it." Positive solutions (attracting new users) are preferable to negative ones (taking a hard line on 15-year old Star Trek fans).
--Sam