[WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

[Sage Ross]

On 2/24/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/25/07, Sage Ross <ragesoss+wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Standard practice has diverged considerably from the official line,
> > and I agree with Phil that we need to amend WP:N in particular to be
> > more accommodating of content where the subject can at least be
> > verified to exist (e.g., webcomics, Battlestar Galactica episodes,
> > marginally notable real people).
>
> I can confirm that 30 million chemical elements exist.

Huh?


> Given that old enough census data is published with can confirm rather
> a lot of people exist as well. Confirming somthing exists doesn't mean
> much.

I said "be more accommodating"; I don't mean to imply that existence
is sufficient.  A measure of common sense when assessing an article's
reliability  combined with a little looser official standards for
notability is the main thing (i.e., accepting that some topics that
people want to see in Wikipedia will have few good sources but keeping
rather than deleting them is still a plus to the overall quality of
Wikipedia).

> There is another problem with what you propose. Check out the talk
> pages of articles releated to [[Watchmen]] (or the trivia secetion on
> a lot of our lower quality articles). These fans likely know a lot
> about the subject but the conflicting interptritiations. The sexuality
> section on [[Rorschach (comics)]] can be a fine source of black humor.

The problem I see there is failure to follow WP:WAF.  Forcing that
material into an out-of-universe perspective would bring out the best
from what is indeed rough going in its present form; it would bring
out the fact that conflicting interpretations exist and get much
closer to NPOV than it is now.

-Sage