I agree with Bryan, not Todd. The content of WP is a compromise among
the things different people think important.
I joined primarily to increase the traditional academic content. I
soon saw it was equally a matter of radically improving it, such
content as there was especially in history and the humanities tending
to come unaltered from century-old reference books. And I saw that
many WPedians tried to delete content for academics--even members of
the US National Academy of Sciences or the Royal Society -- on the
sometimes stated grounds that nobody who did not win a Nobel prize was
important. I gradually learned how to help others defend such
material--though there is still the astounding situation that less
than half the current members of these bodies have articles, cf.
[
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_National_Academy_of_Sciā¦
]
and compare [
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fellows_of_the_Royal_Society]
with [
http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/fellowsindex2.cfm].
And I was properly scandalized not as much by the excessive detail of
the popular culture sections, but by the policies for complete
coverage of numbered highways and the like.
So I have realized that the practical way of building an encyclopedia
is mutual tolerance. If there is enough content to write articles, and
if the subjects of of any recognizable importance within their area,
let the people who want to write articles do so. It's the only way to
get what I consider the serious stuff included.
And with respect to popular culture, the current problem seems to be
that the current proponents of these deletions do not recognize the
significance of creative works on each other, or the importance of
themes and setting in books and moviesThis is as much a subject of
literary criticism as the description of the plot and the characters,
and academic sources and popular reviews are available for many of the
genres. So in a sense it comes down to anti-intellectualism, in a
way. And again the problem is the quality of the articles--in almost
no cases has anyone bothered to source this content, even when the
sources can readily be found online. It's the same amateurish
superficial approach as with the historical subjects: write down what
comes immediately to hand and stop there..
Adding this content is not made easier by the current rash of
deletions. it takes many hours of work with print and electronic
library resources to source one of these articles properly, often with
material not available except in large academic libraries. An article
can be nominated for deletion in about 2 minutes, less if one uses the
same deletion rationale for all.
it is also not made easier by the opinion of some of the deletion
proponents that whatever articles are found are not relevant, the
opinion of some that list formats are inherently suspicious, and the
opinion of a few that the content would not be encyclopedic even if
sourced. The typical rationale given is loosely associated items--if
for movies to have a common theme is a loose association, I don't know
what would count as a tight one.
The name of "trivia" doesn't help of course. But popular culture is a
serious field of study, and about half the people at WP will not
believe it--and, even here, make fun of the name. Even were it only a
field of popular interest, it would equally deserve treatment.
And then there is the expressed preference of war rather than reason
for making decisions, and the general unwillingness to compromise,
both characteristic of WP process.
I doubt I could agree more with David - we have a serious problem with
people tagging articles of valid encyclopedic value for deletion. I'm no
rabid inclusionist - I'm still a nominal member of ADW, just for kicks - but
it really ticks me off whenever I burrow through [[C:CSD]] and find people
tagging perfectly fine stubs with deletion reasons such as "inadequate
context". (And 9 times out of 10, this is done by one of those funny scripts
people install so they can more efficiently tag valid articles for
deletion.)
I mean, what on earth is wrong with an article like "X was mayor of New York
City from so-and-so to so-and-so?" What is wrong with a poorly formatted but
perfectly readable list of bishops for a particular diocese? It seems to me
that people tag articles for deletion because it's now a crime to write an
article that's any less than [[WP:GA]] standard that isn't about a Pokemon
or movie character.
There's a fair bit of intellectual snobbishness going on, but I would say as
much if not more anti-intellectual snobbishness, just because people don't
understand certain things and/or don't tolerate wikin00bery. The appropriate
thing to do with these articles is to tag them with {{stub}} or {{cleanup}}
(and let someone else come along to change the tag to something more
specific), rather than tag them for deletion. We're not out to build the
perfect encyclopaedia in one day.
Johnleemk