[WikiEN-l] Deleting over 45000 items

[William Pietri]

Tony Sidaway wrote:
> On 6/21/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
>   
>> Now I could imagine wanting to know something about Citizen Kane before
>> seeing it, but without having the central mystery given away. Happily,
>> [[Citizen Kane]] does a good job of that through careful writing. The
>> article makes clear that a mystery is central to the plot, and the plot
>> summary only gives away the goods at the end. You are unlikely to hit
>> the secret accidentally.
>>     
>
> This is the kind of comment that reduces me to complete and utter
> baffled disbelief: that the extraordinary cinematic experience of a
> work like Citizen Kane can be reduced in some minds to a single,
> rather hackneyed mcguffin, which if known in advance, in some way
> "spoils" the film.
>   

Good thing that's not what I meant, then. Or, looking back, even what said.

I'm not saying that it isn't worth seeing if you know. What I am saying 
is that Welles carefully, beautifully used the power of a mystery to 
create a deeper emotional engagement in the viewer. Citizen Kane's power 
isn't the story told, it's in the telling of the story. The mystery is a 
part of that. Without need or benefit, that experience was denied to me, 
in a way that smidgen of care would have averted. Instead, I got to be 
irritated at the revealer every time Welles gave another hint.

If Welles went to all that trouble to set up something, why exactly do 
you feel empowered to undo it casually? From what I've read of Welles, 
if some marketing hack had put a giveaway on the posters, Welles would 
have ripped out and eaten his still-beating heart.

It seems to me that we can write a perfectly good encyclopedia while 
still respecting the both the artist's intent and the experience of 
readers. Our [[Citizen Kane]] article does that well, and without 
spoiler tags. Why you'd have a problem with that I can't fathom.

> We do not write a good encyclopedia by pandering to that kind of
> illiteracy (a word that used in this context is, I think, doubly
> appropriate).

Do you find that insulting the people you disagree with helps you much? 
Because it's not doing much for me, really.

William