[WikiEN-l] Google Knol: Move over Wikipedia?

[phoebe ayers]

On Dec 20, 2007 7:25 AM,  <joshua.zelinsky at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> Quoting Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca>:
>
> > Steve Bennett wrote:
> >> On 12/17/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> >>> My hope from all this is that it will renew our appreciation for some of
> >>> the coverage Wikipedia gives to pop cultural and "low-notability" topics
> >>> that have been under steady pressure from merging and deleting for a
> >>> long time now. It's true that our quality is sometimes lacking on these
> >>> areas, but they're topics that people actually want to read and come to
> >>> Wikipedia looking for information on. It's silly to shoot ourselves in
> >>> the foot by turning them away.
> >>
> >> We don't turn them away. Pop culture is a huge part of Wikipedia. Of
> >> course, the absolute most revoltingly bad parts of it we kill off. But
> >> your implication that we're slowly moving towards some state where
> >> there will be very little or no pop culture on Wikipedia is off the
> >> mark.
> >
> > A long while ago I noticed that there were articles for most episodes
> > from the "Scrubs" TV show, a very popular comedy series. They were
> > mostly quite detailed, with comprehensive infoboxes and standardized
> > sections, very far from "revoltingly bad". They were poorly categorized
> > so I created [[category:Scrubs episodes]] and spent an hour or so
> > tidying everything up, then moved on with other things since I don't
> > watch the series myself.
> >
> > A few days back I got an automated notice that category:Scrubs episodes
> > was up for speedy deletion because it was empty. I see now that pretty
> > much every episode article has been wiped out and redirected to the
> > "list of Scrubs articles", which has only the barest minimum of
 .....
>
> The relevant guidelines are WP:FICT and WP:EPISODE which are frankly
> being used
> to remove a tremendous amount of content. The sensible thing to do for all of
> this is to allow some minimum of inherited notability. But I doubt anyone is
> going to go for that. Almost every tv show on my watchlist is being wiped out.
> This isn't creating as much drama as the webcomics but it is far more
> pervasive.  Many of the Stargate editors have left simply in disgust and I
> suspect this is true for other series as well.

I have actually noticed this myself, as little time as I spend working
on this area.
I think there's two reasons it's misguided, neither of which will be
accepted as valid arguments on AfD in a million years:

a) People come to the site looking for this information. If it's
something people expect to find on Wikipedia, they should probably be
able to find it there.

b) Many, many other shows have pages for every episode; I doubt if
we're getting rid of the pages for Buffy or MASH anytime soon. So if
some shows have article, then why not all, the summarily deleted fan
editor is likely to wonder. Who are these crazy inconsistent
Wikipedians? I've seen, for instance, half the episodes of a tv show
get merged and rdr'ed, but not the other half (plus a couple deleted
for good measure). In Wikipedia, inherited notability has not been a
valid argument, but in the rest of the world it would seem to make
sense to have a blanket policy -- either we allow pages for individual
episodes, or we don't. This business about "only the most notable"
episodes, which is currently in WP:EPISODE, doesn't make much sense
from a sourcing standpoint (especially for new shows), is quite hard
to enforce, and it seems is being enforced arbitrarily.

c) Also, there are plenty of other wikis besides Wikipedia; rather
than Knol, I'd love to see this stuff gently transwiki'd into Wikia if
appropriate, if it has to go.

-- phoebe