On 6/9/06, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 6/9/06, Jesse W jessw@netwood.net wrote:
....
Not that there are not real issues (there were real issues behind the deletionist/inclusionist fight too),
Deletionist/inclusionist issue is real. Largly due to the problem that prior to wikipedia no one appears to have given much though to what an encyopedia is. but what we should include/what we should not include is a serious issue.
-- geni
That's close, but not quite it. I think what it is more about is that previously encyclopedias were written by fairly homogenous "elites", if you will, and that the inherent economic limits meant that they were forced to stay within the area of "no-brainers", subjects which were to them obviously encyclopedia-worthy, which they could easily reach consensus on, being fairly homogenous elites. But by the same token, that means that they never had to grapple with any edge issues, whereas we do, as en has by and large exhausted a good many of the obviously encyclopedia-worthy articles (though not all, or else we wouldn't have the missing encyclopedia article project), and so must confront the margins; and of course, Wikipedia is hardly written by a fairly homogenous elite, regardless of whatever it may have started life as, or the realities of its power structure.
~maru