[WikiEN-l] Notability for FLOSS - the public's reaction

[Charles Matthews]

Gwern Branwen wrote:
> The [[dwm]] deletion discussion has caught the interest of some of the
> more nerdy online communities:
>
> - http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/b8s29/the_wikipedia_deletionists_are_at_it_again_this/
> - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1163884
>
> It's interesting to see the general levels of disgust and how few
> current editors there are in comparison to former, and read the
> dislike of WP:N.
>   
As usual, one has to sift the arguments. Why aren't blogs included under 
RS? That would be because they are generally unreliable? Why does a 
snowboarding slalom event not have its own article? That would be 
because no one has started one, I guess. Why does someone who left in 
2006 still bring it up? Elephant's memory for grudges, I suppose.
> I certainly hope the usability initiatives bear fruit and entice
> regular people into becoming editors, because we're burning our
> bridges among our original techy contributor base.
>   
Yes, the logic should be that the encyclopedia during the next decade 
gets its priorities in line with the human race in general, or at least 
anglophone online members in general, rather than those of the geeky end 
of the spectrum. Whatever those are owed (which is much). Perhaps then 
we might get more of the perspective that writing off a database of 
three million articles because of the absence of the three of particular 
personal interest is a trifle blinkered. Though I'm not so sure about 
that ...

Oh yes, and what Carcharoth said about FLOSS history needing the 
secondary sources: if "they" don't write the history, it isn't just WP 
coverage that suffers, but the whole documentation, especially if the 
primary sources are emails, perishable web pages, and suchlike.

Charles