On 11/30/06, Tony Jacobs gtjacobs@hotmail.com wrote:
On 11/30/06, Tony Jacobs gtjacobs@hotmail.com wrote:
From: "The Cunctator" cunctator@gmail.com Reply-To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org To: "English Wikipedia" wikien-l@wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] GNAA Deleted! Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 11:32:21 -0500
I for one think it's pathetic that Wikipedia is giving up on the
mission
of
being a complete encyclopedia because there exist specialty sites on particular areas of knowledge.
I disagree. Wikipedia can't be all things to all people, and I think
it's
silly to try. Wikipedia should consider itself one of a community of wikis, specifically, the encyclopedic one, with academic standards. Why not allow for there to be multiple sources of information, and let the different ones specialize in different things and get good at what they do?
Why can't Wikipedia be all things to all people?
I have nothing against specialists, but I also see no reason that they shouldn't be subsumed in the gaping maw of Wikipedia.
One of the great things about the move to electronic media is that you finally have the opportunity to erase the artificial divide between
general
scope and specific detail that is necessary in the print world.
I guess one could try that, but the vision of Wikipedia that I've been working with is that it aims to be an *encyclopedia*, understanding that word to carry certain connotations about summarizing information from secondary sources. I think that's a worthy goal, and I'm not ready to abandon it yet in favor of something I frankly don't believe in.
Consider Wookiepedia, the Star Wars wiki. That's a great resource for all things Star Wars, I'm sure, and it would be a significantly weaker resource if they required that all their contributions be sourced in previously published sources. They need original research. At Wikipedia, meanwhile, our article on the French Revolution would be considerably weaker if we didn't insist that all material be sourced in other publications. We need verifiability. I'm quite happy to go to one place for original research, and another for verifiable information.
Consider AboutUs.org, a domain directory Wiki. They aim to cover every domain on the web, with directory type information. Our policies would be useless for them, and their content is useless to us, for the most part. Hence, two wikis.
I agree that all of this different information should be available, I just don't see WP as the top level of the heirarchy; I see us as one of many wikis. Like it or not, we're specialists - we specialize in well-sourced articles on topics for which such sources exist. Let someone like Wikiindex take the ceiling; we've got a comfortable niche where we are.
I'd just like to remind people that Wikipedia was doing quite well in the Age Before Required Sourcing.
You may consider yourself a specialist "in well-sourced articles on topics for which such sources exist" but don't tar me with that same brush.
You use the words "we" and "us" a bit too cavalierly, I think. Wikipedia is healthiest when it allows any number of motivations for contributors, rather than enforcing a Platonic model of the perfect Wikipedian.