[WikiEN-l] Writing for the Pedia

[charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com]

I must be strange - perhaps friends and family have been right about this, all along. I actually turn with relief to adding articles to enWP, from all other related activities. I find a good bit of gnoming relaxing. I love to add redirects.

The "low-hanging fruit" argument deserves further analysis. The number of missing topics is just huge. There are new current events every day. My interest is in quite other areas, some of which I find not exactly untouched but in need of attention at the most basic level (Irish bishops, anyone?). There is a rather different point, which is that the 'media' model, very obvious in the blogosphere, is that people assume that talking about what everyone else is talking about is how the Internet works. In some sense WP contradicts that, by being both in advance and behind the main conversations. We have some antiquarian stuff, and some science and technical topics ahead of mainstream media interest. It doesn't really follow that, from the taking in of each other's washing that goes on in the media, that this is our main job. 

There is still such a vast collection of information in a typical academic library that we don't cover. I can't imagine ever running out of things to write.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam