[WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

[John Lee]

On 2/27/07, T P <t0m0p0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/27/07, John Lee <johnleemk at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > So you are saying that if a field is completely forgotten or outmoded,
> > even
> > if we have the secondary sources to back us up and our encyclopaedia is
> > not
> > on paper, we should not be including articles on that field? I'd like
> some
> > concrete examples - but then again, these are all hypotheticals since
> > nobody's ever written an encyclopaedia and published it in realtime.
> Then
> > again, could you perhaps point to some topics fifteen years old which
> you
> > think would not be worthy of inclusion in an encyclopaedia today, but
> > would
> > have been included in Wikipedia by experts at the peak of the topics'
> > fame?
>
>
> I think our reliance on secondary sources does help a lot.
>
> On the other hand, a lot of pop culture is ephemeral.  Minor entertainers
> and video games come to mind.  Do we need an article on Michael Richards'
> racist tirade?  Britney Spears in rehab?  Do we really want articles on
> the
> latest Paris fashions, each year and every year?
>
> I suppose such information has a certain historical value, but it doesn't
> fit in with my conception of what an encyclopedia should cover.
>
> Adam


Well, I believe such incidents would be included in an encyclopaedia of
Michael Richards or Britney Spears-related things. And certainly,
biographies written about them in the future would mention the incidents. I
don't think they make a good example, though, because any articles about
such incidents would almost certainly be merged into another relevant
article - typically the main article on the celebrity in question - because
there's simply not much you can say about them. And as for the latest Paris
fashions, we have an article for every year of the Oscars - why not an
article for every year of a Paris fashion show, as long as the sources are
there?

Also, remember the great thing about Wikipedia is that information can both
be put in and taken out at the click of a mouse. If (let's say) this
information some day truly becomes an embarassment to WP, we can delete it -
and at the same time, the articles would have served their purpose
throughout their lifetime, by being a resource for the readers of an era
where the information was considered relevant and appropriate for an
encyclopaedia or other general reference tertiary source.

Johnleemk