On 2/27/07, Nick Wilkins nlwilkins@gmail.com wrote:
True, but when I go on one of my reading sprees (and the three hours referenced in the comic isn't exactly unusual...) I'm not specifically looking for say, [[Taylor Hanson]]. If I get there from [[Tacoma Narrows Bridge]], there's a good chance I've never heard of Taylor Hanson before and followed a trail of "loosely related material" because I found connections interesting. I have, in fact, gotten to [[Taylor Hanson]] fairly randomly (and even that's assuming I haven't been using the oh-so-wonderful random page button).
If an article's lead isn't interesting, I'll close that browser tab and go on to the next one. If it is interesting, I'll read the article and probably open a few new links. In other words, I'll tend to go to whatever the article links to in much the same way that when reading a magazine I'll flip to whatever the magazine gives me.
This is obviously merely my approach as a reader. Does every reader take this approach? Probably not. Would I do this with the Encyclopaedia Britannica? Heck no. But without this aspect of Wikipedia, I'd probably use Wikipedia about as much as I do Britannica.
What I'm trying to say is an encyclopedia article should not be written like a magazine article. A lot of what could be included to "relate something to people's lives" is, frankly, trivia.
Adam