[WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

[geni]

On 2/24/07, Philip Sandifer <sandifer at english.ufl.edu> wrote:
> I just had dinner with [[Scott McCloud]], and, unsurprisingly, the
> conversation turned to webcomics, and, eventually, to Wikipedia's
> treatment of them. (This was partially spurred by the Kristopher
> Straub debacle, about which I will say only that it demonstrates the
> degree to which the bias is overwhelmingly towards deletion across
> many areas of Wikipedia right now)
>

As a general rule attempting to prove anything from an n=1 sample is a
really really bad idea.

If we accept those I can show that people are adding webcomic articles
to wikipedia in order to promote them.

> McCloud is somebody who knows comics. He quite literally wrote the
> book on them. In the course of the conversation it became clear that
> he was pretty well completely fed up with Wikipedia. And it should be
> noted, this comes from someone who has been on the forefront of
> digital technology debates several times. He makes clear his
> admiration for the concept of Wikipedia. He makes clear his
> admiration for how Wikipedia got started. His problem is with how it
> works now.
>

His problem is that wikipedia isn't what he wants it to be. Wikipedia
is the second or third to document things not the first.

> The problem he has? Notability. Specifically the arbitrary and
> capricious way in which AfD targets things, questions their
> notability, and uses guidelines that make no sense from the outside.
>

Treating those outside wikipedia as a single homogeneous group is
illogical. Different groups will have different views about whether or
not certain guidelines make sense. can find plenty of groups that
think including any webcomics at all make us inferior and think that
our inclusion of such non entities as penny arcade.

> See also Timothy Noah's recent article on Slate for this - it gives a
> good view of how notability guidelines look to the outside. In this
> case, it's how they look to the subject of the article, but I assure
> you - they look similar to people who are familiar with the subject.
> In short, they appear a Kafka-esque absurdity.
>

Almost any set of rules can be made to appear that way.

> This is a new problem - these are major figures who are sympathetic
> to Wikipedia but fed up with its operation. And I can tell you, the
> tone among people I talk to in that real life thing I maintain is
> pretty similar - great respect for Wikipedia as a concept, reasonable
> respect for Wikipedia as a resource, no respect for Wikipedia as
> something anyone would ever want to edit. The actual editorial
> process of Wikipedia is rightly viewed as a nightmare. Hell, I view
> it as a nightmare at this point - I've given up editing it because
> the rules seem to have been written, at this point, with the
> intention of writing a very bad encyclopedia.
>

No they are written with the objective of avoiding an extremely bad
encyclopedia.

> Our efforts to ensure reliability have come at the cost of a great
> deal of respect - and respect from people we should have respect
> from. We are losing smart, well-educated people who are sympathetic
> to Wikipedia's basic principles. That is a disaster.
>

You would have to show that we would not have lost respect from them
anyway and that any net change in respect levels is worse than what
would have happened if we had not taken steps to try and ensure
reliability.

> And it's a disaster that can be laid squarely at the feet of the
> grotesque axis of [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:N]] - two pages that are eating
> Wikipedia alive from the inside out. (And I don't mean this in terms
> of community. I mean that they are systematically being used to turn
> good articles into crap,

systematically?

> and have yet to demonstrate their actual use
> in turning bad articles into good ones.)

Various articles with fridge fanatics would be an example.


-- 
geni