[WikiEN-l] Citizendium charter ratified

[Carcharoth]

That's not strictly true (the "there is no other widely-recognized
online repository of straightforward information about almost any
subject someone wants to look up"). Well, I suppose it is true, but it
only works because of the qualifiers "straightforward" and "almost"
and "wants to look up". Like many here, I've spent years looking
things up online, and I sometimes hope that someone has made a more
rigorous study of things than the account I give where I say that it
felt like there was an information explosion going on over the past
ten to fifteen years as more and more sources came online.

There is plenty of obscure stuff that you still have to look up behind
paywalls, or look for specialised publications (books and journals and
monographs). I find myself coming across stuff like that all the time,
but it is true that Wikipedia is often a convenient *starting* point
for digging deeper. But if I don't find what I want on Wikipedia, I
keep looking. Of the free (i.e. non-paywall) sources available, the
best for my purposes is often the book scans found at archive.org and
on Google Books. In theory, as anyone can access those, they will
eventually be used to source Wikipedia articles, but for obscure
subjects that will take a very long time.

And the organisation on Wikipedia is not always great either. I was
looking up stuff about Port Jackson (now Sydney, Australia) and the
First Fleet and its commander, and the information was spread around
several articles. It took some clicking to work out that the best
account was in the article about the commander. I do still, fairly
often, find myself using Wikipedia to get a general idea, but
realising that the content is not great and clicking away (usually
back to Google) to find a better website account somewhere else,
either more reliable or more readable, or both.

And to forestall {{sofixit}} questions as to why I don't try and fix
such areas myself, it is mainly lack of time and being in "reader"
mindset rather than "editor" mindset. The minimum I could do would be
to make a note and return to it later, and the number of areas I could
note would be more than I could handle, though I suppose leaving notes
on the talk page for others to follow up might work. It would also be
interesting to return to the same areas in a year's time and see if
the 'system' had improved things.

Carcharoth

On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 12:35 AM, William Beutler
<williambeutler at gmail.com> wrote:
> So what else is being sold? Citizendium and everything2? Britannica
> and Encarta? There are vast differences between Wikipedia and the
> aforementioned, and don't forget that Encarta is no more.
>
> Wikipedia's "USP" is that there is no other widely-recognized online
> repository of straightforward information about almost any subject someone
> wants to look up. So actually, "you've heard of us" is a USP -- that it
> ranks so high on Google means it is highly convenient. Frequently, that's
> the most important SP of all.
>
> On Sun, Sep 26, 2010 at 6:16 PM, Tony Sidaway <tonysidaway at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Thanks, somebody finally came out and gave the explanation without
>> which this thread made very little sense.
>>
>> Of course Wikipedia's unique selling point is its enormous community
>> of dedicated editors. Anybody could take a copy of our content, but
>> maintaining it would require a living community and that's what we
>> have.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>