[WikiEN-l] Frustrated

[Ray Saintonge]

Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

>On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 11:12:26 -0800, Ray Saintonge
><saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>This is one of those so-what articles.  I would have no interest to go 
>>there in search of information; it's fundamentally useless.  Still, I'm 
>>not about to complain about it, and there are ways of dealing with the 
>>how-tall-is-tall criterion.  There are people who love to play with this 
>>kind of list, and I am glad to see these eager little minds diverted 
>>into harmlessly useless endeavours.  What we end up with is a handful of 
>>old-fashioned school principals who have forgotten their principles and 
>>a bunch of kindergartners who are learning through play.  The rest of us 
>>are learning or teaching somewhere else in the school; we don't directly 
>>give a damn about what's happening in the kindergarten.  For us, 
>>Wikipedia's reputation does not depend on self-righteous principals 
>>suppressing kindergarten activity.  We mostly don't get involved in 
>>specific deletion arguments; that would be too time-consuming.  But we 
>>do resent being assumed to belong to some imagined consensus.
>>    
>>
>That's terribly harsh.  Your analogy is also flawed, because the
>kindergarteners here are learning through play (using someone else's
>toys) that original research is just fine, making up your own
>subjective criteria is no problem and all you need to do is gather
>together lots of people to shout "I like it!" and it gets kept
>regardless of failing core policy. I fail to see how this is good.
>
>Plus, I am advocating replacing it with a verifiable and objective
>list, which they can still play with, just not adding their favourite
>basketball star.  They might have to do some research.  Something they
>could - you know - learn from.
>
It may be a little harsh, but it's also easy to end up spending a lot of 
time debating something that doesn't matter.  Kindergartners usually do 
play with someone else's toys, and a progressive school will choose to 
provide toys that better accomplish the learning goal.  In our 
kindergarten the desired learning outcome may be the ability to reach a 
consensus about what is meant by "tall".  I don't think that original 
research has a big importance in "Lists" since these articles are really 
pathways to the real articles.  To the extent that the contents are red 
links, I view them as suggestions for future articles where that 
person's membership in the list can be questioned or documented.  We 
need extra caution when list membership could be libellous, but those 
lists are exceptions.

People love lists and are fascinated by them even if they make scholars 
cringe.  Some interesting books published over the last two centuries 
(like Haydn's Book of Dates) have had lists as a prominent feature.  To 
me lists are a stepping stone to more informative material.

Ec