[WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

[William Pietri]

geni wrote:
> On 2/25/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
>   
>> Are you suggesting that it's ok that an expert in a topic, especially
>> one who is known for his technological savvy and ability to write for
>> the general public, can't understand our notability guidelines for his
>> field?
>>     
>
> Given that we don't have any for his field ([[Wikipedia:Notability
> (fiction)]] doesn't really cover it and [[Wikipedia:Notability (web)]]
> only mentions a small part of it in passing) it seems not unreasonable
> that he does not understand them.
>   

Ok. Who do you believe can understand them then?


>> That puzzles me, as I'd think that if Scott McCloud can't understand our
>> comic guidelines, there's no hope that your average comic fan will be
>> able to get them. And unless we're restricting AfD and article creation
>> to information architects and people with Master of Library Science
>> degrees (which I'm assuming is what you mean by experts in data
>> sorting), that seems like a big minus to me.
>>     
>
> I would like those people to go over our guidelines yes.
>   

I agree that would be great, but from your response I feel like you miss 
my point.

If it's ok that an expert in the field can't figure out what we would 
and wouldn't keep under our guidelines, why would we expect anybody else 
to be able to apply them usefully or, on the receiving end, feel like 
they are being applied fairly?

It seems to me like you're saying that only a data sorting expert could 
understand our guidelines, and that's ok by you. I'm saying that that if 
that's the case, then we are guaranteed that our deletion process would 
not just look capricious but actually be capricious, because it's not 
data sorting experts who are doing most of the adding of articles or the 
removing of them on AfD.

Is that something you're also content with? I'm not saying that's 
necessarily unreasonable. Although I wouldn't agree, I can see people 
just writing this chaos off as an acceptable cost. But I want to be sure 
I understand what you're saying.

William


-- 
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri