On 2/27/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:
T P wrote:
There's nothing stupid about a prestigious
reference work (as Wikipedia
has
become) waiting for a field to become significant
before writing about
it.
If it becomes significant in fifteen years, we can
write about it in
fifteen
years. [[WP:MASTODON]]
The world is moving faster than that. One unique feature about
Wikipedia is that it is contemporaneous with its content. Some of the
details which make our time what it is are ephemeral, and may not be
researchable in fifteen years.
Ec
Wait a minute...are you saying that all the secondary sources on a
particular topic available now will no longer be available in fifteen years?
It's difficult to imagine that being true, unless it's for some particularly
rare topic. I can't imagine many ephemeral fields where many articles are
allegedly unfairly being deleted.
It's possible webcomics are one of those fields - and I'm not saying they
aren't - but normally one argument in favour of waiting is that we rarely
have the necessary perspective now, but that given a certain amount of time,
we will be able to look back and better assess what is important, and what
is not. The idea is that some subjects will no longer be researchable, but
that this is a good thing, because of some form of darwinisim, i.e. the
non-notable chaff will be separated from the wheat.
I'm not saying I endorse this line of thought, but it's an interesting one
that shouldn't be rejected out of hand.
Johnleemk