[WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

[John Lee]

On 2/27/07, T P <t0m0p0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/26/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> >
> > > On Feb 26, 2007, at 8:40 PM, T P wrote:
> > >> I noted elsewhere that, as a volunteeer effort, Wikipedia is
> primarily
> > >> written to satisfiy the needs of the writers.
> > >
> > > and
> > >
> > >> Practically speaking, what matters is the opinions of the people
> > >> working on
> > >> Wikipedia, because you sure as hell aren't going to "fix" Wikipedia
> > >> just
> > >> because outsiders think it's broken.
> >
> > on 2/26/07 8:44 PM, Phil Sandifer at Snowspinner at gmail.com wrote:
> > >
> > > There's not much to say here. Both of these statements are, I think,
> > > 100% wrong. They are the polar opposite of how Wikipedia should work.
>
>
>
>
> > They represent the exact instinct that causes many of the problems
>
> > I've been describing here. I think it is vital that we do everything
> > > we can to resist these attitudes on every conceivable level.
>
>
> I think you need to distinguish between the way Wikipedia works and the
> way
> you think it should work.  My comments relate to the former.  Yours relate
> to the latter.
>
> If you can think of a way to make a volunteer organization like Wikipedia
> work the way you think it should work, more power to you.
>
> Adam


Correction: that's the way *AfD* works. You note that WP exists to serve the
writers, but most (if not all) of those commenting on certain nominations
may have never written on the topic concerned. That's not to say they should
be ignored, because WP works by consensus, but if the people who know most
about a field are writing about something, or saying that something deserves
an article, then generally shouldn't it be included, unless it fails certain
guidelines/policies, e.g. verifiability?

Johnleemk