[Wikimedia-l] Travel Guide Wiki

[Tom Morris]

On 12 April 2012 21:24, James Heilman <jmh649 at gmail.com> wrote:
> With respect to audience, on Wikipedia we write for a general audience yet
> our medical content is still used by 50-70% of practicing physicians.
> Lonely planet lists hotels in different section based on price. On
> Wikipedia we use editorial judgement about what to include and what not to
> include. We have subjective policies like [[WP:DUE]]. Just because
> something is subjective does not mean it cannot be done. There are books
> like the 1000 must see places before you die.
> http://www.1000beforeyoudie.com/  Referencing of this content is possible.
>

It is one of the most pernicious myths in Wikimedia-land that we
aren't riddled with subjective standards.

1. As an English Wikinews reviewer, I make decisions as to the
importance and newsworthiness of what goes on the homepage every time
I publish a story. Is the latest development in the Trayvon Martin
case more or less important than Facebook buying Instagram? On what
basis do I make such a decision? Oh yeah, "newsworthiness". That well
known, objective measure! ;-)

2. On Commons, there is a category called "Suggestive use of
feathers". Is there some sort of Platonic measure of how one uses
feathers suggestively? Same for "Erotic pole dancing". Am I to believe
that Commons editors are deciding on some purely objective basis
whether pole dancing images are erotic or not? (I pick on the
erotic/suggestive categories solely because of the BLP-esque issues
Commons often raises and fails to adequately deal with.)

Subjective decisions happen all the time on the projects. There's a
reason why we generally prefer our admins to be made of flesh and
blood rather than just building hyper-intelligent AIs to run the
projects.

-- 
Tom Morris
<http://tommorris.org/>