[WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia

[Andrew Gray]

On 22 December 2010 09:53, Peter Coombe <thewub.wiki at googlemail.com> wrote:

> I do think there are fewer opportunities for such "easy" edits on
> Wikipedia now. Typos seem to be far less common thanks to
> semi-automated tools such as AWB, and most articles are generally more
> mature.

I had an interesting discussion a year or two ago with someone about
the absence of redlinks in "high-quality" articles - in the past few
years, there's been a definite trend to arguing that redlinks are
detrimental to a finished article, and should be removed even when an
article is pretty much guaranteed to be created eventually. Net
result, of course, is that the article is more polished-looking - to
us, at least, even if not to a reader unclear on the red/blue
distinction - but has marginally less reminders of its editability.

I suspect this is part of a similar trend!

It reminds me of the spirit of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Always_leave_something_undone

"Whenever you write a page, never finish it. Always leave something
obvious to do: an uncompleted sentence, a question in the text (with a
not-too-obscure answer someone can supply), wikied links that are of
interest, requests for help from specific other Wikipedians, the
beginning of a provocative argument that someone simply must fill in,
etc. The purpose of this rule is to encourage others to keep working
on the wiki."

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk