[WikiEN-l] Foundational rumblings

[Carcharoth]

On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 10:45 AM, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Over in the recondite if productive arena of WikiProject Mathematics,
> fresh eyeballs have been looking over articles in areas that retain a
> structure imposed up to five years ago, and not much liking what they
> see.

<snip>

Sorry to not run with the mathematics bit, but I wanted to respond to
the point you make about "fresh eyeballs" bringing in new ideas. This
is something that strikes to the heart of Wikipedia - it's
responsiveness in some areas and lack of it in other areas.

One of the points I make time and time again is that articles need to
stand and fall on their own merits. If a certain article, or group of
articles only stays the way it is because a "group" decides that is
how those articles should be, and they stick around to "defend" that
view, then there will inevitably be problems down the road as when
that "group" leaves, or sometimes even when one individual leaves
(this feeds into the issue of some individuals thinking they are
indispensable for a particular topic area or article), then the
structure crumbles unless the underpinning in policy and clearly
explained rationales is extremely strong.

That is why and good-faith new input from others should always be
welcomed, and instead of constant revertings and then (in talk page
discussions) making vague references to "previous discussions", what
should be done is to have a well-organised summary of previous talk
page discussions, so that people can be pointed to previous
discussions and sometimes even a FAQ of answers to perennial
questions.

That way the debates can move forward, rather then being repeated endlessly.

Carcharoth