[WikiEN-l] What en:wp would look like printed out

[Adrian]

Vee schrieb:
>
> I don't really mind people writing about what they are interested in - their
> favourite band/soap opera/movie/whatever - but "x in popular culture"
> sections/articles really do need to go.
>   

Stan Shebs schrieb:
> There are 99 fans for every professional (note the two sets are not 
> disjoint), so it shouldn't be too surprising that the disproportion is 
> reflected in WP. If we continue with our practice of quietly pruning 
> down (usually unsourced) "fan" content, while leaving the (usually 
> sourced) "intellectual" content, over time the intellectual content will 
> be greater and greater.
>
> Stan
>   
Of course everyone writes about what they're interested in, and that's a 
good thing, it's the natural thing. The difference is where fan 
enthusiasm outweighs professional enthusiasm.

The funny thing is that there is a strong trendency to turn "x in pop 
culture" sections into articles, and to decry anyone who disagrees as 
being deletionist (which I'm clearly not, btw).

Stan, in theory, you're right. In practice, I see a tendency to the 
opposite. Take a look at the SA link, in case you don't know it yet. 
It's an old story, but the examples of article pairs, although many of 
them are chosen tongue-in-cheek, speak for themselves.

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/wikigroaning.php

But the problems of fan-writing go much deeper.

On many sportspersons' articles, there's an unreferenced statement "the 
greatest X-player of all time". Remove the statement, and a fan is going 
to revert you. Over and over.

Or try appropriately tagging some Star Wars Expanded Universe articles 
as {{in-universe}} and {{primarysources}}. Chances are, the crowd is 
going to remove them sooner or later. Better yet, try and nominate a 
bunch of the worst for deletion, and you will be shouted down as a 
deletionist.

Or, to give a more subtle example, I recently changed the sentence "Neil 
Armstrong was the first man to have set foot on an extraterrestrial 
world" to "[...] on the moon". 
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neil_Armstrong&diff=prev&oldid=149791627

Also, there are too many users primarily interested in social 
networking, with signature collections and all. Btw: Mr. Wales, if you 
are reading this, there are some users you could make very happy by 
signing their pages. Really.

But what makes me pessimistic (at least right now) is that while 
Wikipedia already has an increasing anti-intellectual systemic bias 
already, as more and more Web2.0 spoiled users arrive and others quit, 
there are still complaints about too much elitism. Wikipedia should be 
much less democratic than it currently is. Seriously, democracy is a 
purely idealistic concept. No state in the world ever was or ever will 
be truly democratic. Some dimwits on certain websites keep complaining 
about how Jimbo is "God King". I wish he and others would actually take 
on that responsibility, because it's necessary. Self-governing on a 
project as large as Wikipedia is ludricous period.

To abuse the words of Tom Lehrer: "The reason most folk songs are so 
atrocious is that they were written by the people."

Wow. Sorry for that rant.  I fell bitter already. I mean better.

-Adrian