[WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

[Peter Ansell]

On 25/02/07, 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)
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.)

Unfortunately there is a nucleus of users who are able to endlessly
debate these particular issues, at both the policy pages and as AfD
"regulars", leaving people who just want to improve articles at a
complete loss when the articles they put a lot of work into are
deleted using what they see as arbitrary notions of what should be in
the free encyclopaedia which has been touted as containing all human
knowledge...

I feel like I have said all this before...

And its not a mysterious de ja vu in this case...

Peter Ansell