[WikiEN-l] Attack Site Wars, Episode VII... The Return of the Essjay

[The Cunctator]

On 6/27/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> White Cat wrote:
>
> >That is an excellent point. What dispute from those early days of older
> >encyclopedias encyclopedia (some 2 or 3 millennia old) do we have
> articles
> >on? Did they cover such disputes themselves? Ultimately such events are
> far
> >too small to be worth an actual coverage. There isn't much to write about
> >them as well.
> >
> How many encyclopedias are more than a millenium old.  What is different
> for us is that Wikipedia is not paper. Before Guttenberg there was a
> tremendous challenge to getting any kind of information distributed.
> These difficulties were bound to have an influence on the notability
> standards of the time.
>
> >Wikipedia is an important site as you point out and for that reason. In
> the
> >future any minor conflict on wikipedia will be news. No one can actually
> >predict the potential of the project, myself included.
> >
> Whether anything will become encyclopedic is difficult to predict.  I'm
> sure that if you went through old newspapers you would find many
> articles about others in similar circumstances that are long since
> forgotten.  We are big enough to influence notability.  Our own debates
> on a subject affect its notability.  Essjay becomes more notable
> _because_ we maintain such a lively debate about him.  For that matter,
> trolls become more important _because_ so many people insist on feeding
> them.
>
> >Media gives too much coverage on useless news. Anna Nicole Smith's death
> had
> >more coverage on CNN than September 11th or a State of the Union address.
> >
> Wikisource includes the full text of all of the State of the Union
> Addresses.  I don't think that your statement comparing CNN's coverage
> of Smith and 9/11 has any basis in fact.  Yes, the media do spend too
> much coverage on useless news, but as long as people keep watching that
> stuff they will keep showing it.  Where would the sponsorship go if the
> news programmes told the truth about the sponsors' industries.


Also, you're making a value judgment about what's useless. For all we know a
personality cult will form around Anna Nicole Smith in 100 years. After all
the Gospels were all written well after Jesus's death. It's best not to try
to predict the future.

(That said, obviously it's inane. But the inanity of content shouldn't be
our guide.)