[WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

[Ray Saintonge]

Philip Sandifer 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)
>
Deletion to the point of sterility.

>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.
>
>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.
>
I know nothing about webcomics.  That's enough to qualify me to stay 
away from any specific deletion debate about any of them. 

>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.
>
It has the appearance of a project that has lost its way.  Time was that 
the public mantra was, "Wikipedia is not reliable."  The "Nature" 
article showed that we weren't so bad, but by then a lot of editors (and 
perhaps Jimbo himself) had been spooked into an obsession for accuracy.  
We have now gone to the opposite extreme.  Our size has brought us into 
seriously uncharted territory about the nature of collaboration and 
inclusivity, and many of our editors schooled in old hierarchical 
structures have yet to make the leap into an environment which cannot be 
subject to the controls with which they are familiar. 

Reliability does matter.  Still there will always be issues where 
reliability remains uncertain or unattainable.  Are we to pretend that 
that world of uncertainty does not exist because we are missing Reliable 
Sources?  Sometimes we need to simply admit that the information has not 
been verified or cannot be verified.  We warn the reader that he uses 
the information at his own risk. 

>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, and have yet to demonstrate their actual use  
>in turning bad articles into good ones.)
>
Notability has been a consistent thorn in the side for as long as I can 
remember.  Reliable Sources started later as one more of many means to 
deal with the notability problem.  None of these means has succeeded. 

Ec