Zero megamanzero@521com wrote: On 6/25/06, Zero wrote:
Please. The value and spirit of the encyclopedia comes before the community every time. The spirit of the encyclopedia is the sharing of knowledge and the freedom of this information unhindered by the source material in any capacity. Sticking silly labels on articles created by hard sweat doesn't fullfill that spirit. Making assumptions on the basis of a networking site must not be mistaken for the the production and flourishing of the encyclopedia. - Zero
Ok, just to carry on your thinking, how do you feel about the
following "silly labels":
- This article is a stub - you can help out by editing it.
- Please expand and improve this section as described on this
article's talk page or at Requests for expansion, then remove this message
- The neutrality of this article is disputed.Please see the discussion
on the talk page.
- This article needs more context around or a better explanation of
technical details to make it more accessible to general readers and technical readers outside the specialty, without removing technical details. See below for more information.
- The title of this article should be eBay. The initial letter is
capitalized due to technical restrictions.
- Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some
special characters in this article.
I have to admit to a sense of irony that we warn users of excessively technical language, and we warn them if the title of the page isn't quite right. We even warn them that the article uses unicode characters. But we refuse to warn them that they may witness >>seriously obscene material or have their enjoyment of a work of fiction totally spoilt.
Ho hum.
Steve
I must admit the mentioned tags are really quite feasible in wikipedia. As an editor with over 14,000 edits, many of them new articles, I must conceed the appropriate tags are quite valuable to the intregity, spirit, improvement and operation of the encyclopedia.
Lets review:
* Stub tag- Lest we forget, this is wikipedia. As an editor, I value completion and professional appearence, so personally I strongly oppose the creation of a brief article; rather I prepare a rather detailed document over a time period in [[User:MegamanZero/Sandbox]] and move it to mainspace upon completion. This, or I merely create the article in one go from the outset.
However, its reasonable to forsee editors do not follow this personal standard, and create a brief article immediately, perhaps without research or proper overview. In this case, we insert the stub template to being attention to it. And as an editor that does much writing, I know from experience they garner attention to make improvement. And improved articles means an improved encyclopedia. Are you aware of how many articles have benefited from expansion from me becuase I took note of the stub or clean-up tag...? Take a gander at my contribution tree. I assure you it is very productive indeed.
* I look upon the second template with slight dissapointment, although I admit it is useful to an outside party with a tendency to expand articles at a whim. Being Bold in wikipedia gets work done.
* I strongly endorse this tag. It provides a service to the encyclopedia in that it requires the attention of a neutral editor. In these cases, all that is required is a rewrite after some research on the matter. I've used it to the advantage in many occassion and it highlights a need when an editor blatently commits to the violation of the neutrality we demand at wikipedia.
* I'm not going to explain the rest in detail; they are all tools for editors to discuss upon for the improvement of the article itself. When readers come to wikipedia, they must expect this is a volunteer project and there is work in progress to make it to the highest quality.
"Our goal is to get wikipedia to Britianica quality or better" - Jimbo Wales
And we will get there, I'm positive. But we have quite a way to go. The most glaring dissapointment I have with the spoiler tag is it wasn't developed with an encyclopedia in mind. Many users claim the offense of "Oh but its nice and it will help not to spoil them". This isn't that kind of website.Wikipedia is an uncensored, pure callaboration of knowledge unhindered by what other social websites may do.
You say" "well it doesn't help the wikipedia, but the reader in a way similar to usenet". This is wrong. Anything promoting such external social ideals lacking in edvidence to improve the encyclopedia itself should of course be deleted on sight. - Zero
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