On 07/04/2008, Phil Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com wrote:
It's not a problem with a specific article so much as a problem with a specific attitude that gets brought up, often at AfD, that seems to me uniquely pernicious as it is based on the substitution of an ostensibly mechanical, automatic standard for one based on judgment and subtlety. This sort of wikinomic has always been a problem, but is becoming more and more of one.
And the reason it's a problem is editors who are bright but are unschooled in joined-up thinking, who (usually unconsciously, some consciously) don't like the idea that judgement takes time and effort to learn, and jump at the promise of a mechanised substitute. Because it clearly works *up to a point*. (Which is what I mean when I say it's at best training wheels for beginners, even if it's no way to do serious work.)
While it certainly cannot be legislated away, we can, at least, take the tools used to bludgeon discussions away from articulate and careful discussions among passionate, knowledgeable editors (i.e. how articles are actually written) and towards a game where you get your way not by persuading anybody, but by going "A ha ha, you only have one independent source."
Yes. The level of clue-hostility is quite remarkable. Encyclopedia writing should not be an exercise in bureaucratic box-ticking.
Can we legislate away the Taylorized killbots who would rather treat Wikipedia as the hot new thing in MMOGs? No. But we can at least stop privledging such approaches in our core policies. Right now bizarrenesses like "interpretations and summaries must be clear to a non-specialist" and "all statements must be backed by sources" - things that have no relationship to any reality of research as it is taught or understood - rule the day.
Yep. It's like a first attempt at the *concept* of properly sourced writing by bright kids ... who bitterly resist people pointing out to them that, actually, people have been doing this sort of thing for a living for hundreds of years.
(If you go to WT:V now you'll see someone quite literally arguing that this is an open source project therefore all past rules don't apply. What?)
- d.